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 Posted: Tue Oct 10, 2023 3:33 pm
Quote: One Foggy Night (6) - As the seasons shift, the temperature changes too. It’s not uncommon for fog to roll in, sometimes from the mountains, sometimes out of nowhere. This fog is particularly thick and difficult to see through; Destiny City has issued several weather warnings and cautions being out or driving at night. It’s easy to get lost and difficult to see obstacles. Not to mention the strange, smothering sensation of dread and fear that rolls in with the fog. While there is sometimes the sensation of being watched, it worsens when the sun goes down. Some have even said they’ve caught glimpses of a tall, horned figure traveling with the fog. The news has reported that this is probably just a side effect of climate change and suspects that weather patterns should return to normal towards the end of the month. , everyone had told her, after everything. The kind had told her, and the fierce. The worriers had told her, and the cautious, and the brave. Don't ever do that again.Careful,, she'd told herself. It was a strange experience, lying low. She hadn't gone out to fight in over a month now. She just took short trips up to her world, that was all. The guilt came back to her now and then, because she still had all this power. She still felt like she was obligated to use it to help those that she could help, to turn the tide of the war in any way that she could. That hadn't gone away, just because she'd died. She was trying to shove it down, though, trying to learn a different way of approaching things, one where she got to live. She had powered up when she saw the mist roll in, though. She went to investigate. Her memory was spotty, and that was under the most generous of terms, but she remembered this. She remembered the beast that lurked in the mist. She remembered its prison. She remembered sealing it away, and if it was going to come to that again, she wanted to be ready. She'd been at a show, and was on her way home, and she was not whisked away, but all the same she thought she caught a glimpse of a stooped, antlered figure once or twice among the mists. She felt the Chaos aura, too, but with things how they were, she didn't know if running would do her any good.
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Posted: Tue Oct 10, 2023 10:21 pm
* Antlers* There and gone. The flashfire image of the grand rack fading away into the mists like a mirage. Like they’d never been there to begin with, and Albite had to stand a moment, ankle deep in the densely swirling grays of shadows and the deep mists that hid all within them while rubbing his eyes in a vain effort to clear a dizzying wave of dejavu. The dreadful sense of it so strong it was headache inducing. He should’ve gone home — * he could’ve* — it took less thought to turn left and leave than it did to turn right and follow the thing that set his hackles on a fine edge even deeper into the chowder-soup thick mire of fog. He’d never been one for thinking too hard though. Moved on instinct instead, compelled by a new high of curiosity mixed with his own innate desire to lay hands on anything that stirred this new sort of fear in his guts. The barest sight of a large form — the distant ping of an aura — and it all ******** * felt* familiar. Impossibly familiar. Illogically familiar. *Like a ghost.* “Ghosts can’t really hurt anything —it’s fine—-“ he lied to himself in a whisper slid between grit teeth, settling into stalking after-images, hunting while ignoring every flinch beneath his skin that warned him he might also be the ‘prey’ in this scenario.
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Posted: Wed Oct 11, 2023 5:00 pm
Cybele did not even think of it, but the strange beasts at the corners of her vision were not the only antlered, ephemeral creatures wandering through the mists. There was also her. Her hair was as pale as her skin, as pale as her clothes. She staggered on her scarred feet, just enough to make her look lumbering, and not quite right. The scar across her chest, the death wound, was healed over, but still a noticeable pink where it peeked out from the collar of her Eternal fuku. Since her corruption, she'd thought of herself as a ghost from time to time, but now she looked the part. The Chaos aura was getting too close to ignore. She still wasn't sure how much good running away would do in these mists, so she turned to face it instead. She saw a hint of green, and dark skin, and bold eyes. Oh. Well, she supposed there was a group of people that she wasn't going to be able to avoid forever. "Albite," she breathed.
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Posted: Thu Oct 12, 2023 9:57 pm
A slope of spine, the ghostly imprints of cloven hooves, the way they imprinted the grass with wet squelches and then faded away into nothing at all. There was a sway of antlers stirring up the mists once more, an entire ring of them attached to flitting forms that made him suddenly feel penned in, until he was staring down their center mass--- Not just any creatures, but deer! The Deer. His ********> the word was airless, moving lips and the sound of every bit of air being sucked out of his lungs in a gasp of disbelief. He wasn't seeing what he was seeing, or feeling what he was feeling! The scene was as brightly alive a lie as any spooky a** s**t that happened every year in Destiny City!
The dice games, the haunted houses, the---
The everything else uncanny and deep valley that he never had an explanation for. That only half seemed to come from this side of the cosmos and then half beyond it. Only some of which was truth and tangible and real. This however? Her, here, haunting the place---
It was a lie. It had to be. It looked unreal and felt unreal, because it wasn't real!! It couldn't be real, but what if it was? What if She was?! Something cracked at the thought, mentally slanted sideways even as his feet felt glued to the earth and sinking ever deeper into it with every passing second that he stared horrorstruck and in awe.
What if she's real?!
Then it isn't fair--- that thought struck like a pain behind his eyes and then shattered messily as any thought he ever had did. Did he fight, did he cry, did he open his mouth and ask the ghost before him how the ******** the world of beyond was treating her!? When Senshi died they were promised the cauldron!! They weren't meant to linger, or haunt, or exist except in the next life!!
She wasn't supposed to linger!! What about reincarnation? What about the next Cybele!!
"Cyb's---" and the nickname hurt to say, he stepped over it with his tongue, dragged across the short sound like flesh over raised glass. He growled for it like he wanted something to bleed. "No. You're not real, are ya dear-heart? Can't be---you're dead---so you can't be here," and his next breath brought him to his full height, even as he trembled like it was some arduous thing to stand tall before her -- surrounded by what had to be her haunted herd -- unable to take his eyes off of every scared and gory reminder, every pale blink that screamed to his eyes one thing while leaving his senses scrambled and questioning the next.
Ghosts couldn't hurt anything though, right!? It was fine!!!
"You shouldn't be here."
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Posted: Fri Oct 13, 2023 6:36 pm
Violet eyes peered through the mist at him, at the way his eyes widened in a way that she'd never seen, in all of the times that they'd fought. She'd seen all the focus, and the ferocity, and the wicked smiles that were uniquely his, but now he looked scared. Perhaps it should have made her feel powerful, to see him lie that, but instead, it just felt wrong, and her own features settled into a hint of a frown as she looked at him. What did you say in a situation like this? Someone had found her alive a few months after she'd soaked the dirt with her lifeblood. He hadn't been there that night, but someone had told him about it, and he was looking at her now like he didn't believe his eyes. "I can't rest," she told him, and her voice might not have cracked so much no that she was healed up, but she was still a bit breathless. Was she playing that up, for a bit of dramatic effect, on this haunted night with other ghosts flicking at the edges of her vision? Perhaps. "No matter what happens to me." Her eyes flicked upwards. They bored into his. "A few years ago it was my soul they broke. It was my will they took. I kept walking." Whoever it was that she had bee before had died that day, but she hadn't stopped. "This time, he destroyed my body, but," she shrugged, with shoulders made of bone and flesh. "Here I am." She couldn't let him know how scared she'd been when she thought it was the end.
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Posted: Sat Oct 14, 2023 4:29 pm
"Don't say that-- that's not---it's not fair, Cybele!" it felt messy as ******** saying her full name, like he meant it to sound respectful for once, like she was flesh and blood and * alive* before him when she should've been anything but! It felt like cursing himself. This wasn't how things were meant to be, and this being anything like a possible outcome was never how he'd imagined it! Senshi were eternal, sure, but Cybele -- this Cybele -- she should've had something like peace!! " It's not fair to you---" a whined whisper of words as he tried and failed to piece what was real with what he was actually seeing. She didn't quite look like a corpse -- nor a zombie -- instead she looked both haunted and haunting, healed wrong and warped ethereal by the fog, the moon, the herd that flickered in and out of view as silent onlookers to his plight. Like they didn't need to trouble her because she was on some different plane of existence then he felt he stood on right now. "You know---for the longest time after they told me what happened, I kept on telling myself I was jealous, just a little bit. Just as jealous as I was proud we'd finally gotten a win---" honest even as he found the will and steel to move, however leadenly, even if it was only a step in her direction. It was something, and the truth was that he had been proud! He loved his husband; as a being of flesh and blood and fire -- as their freshest General King -- whatever had gone down he could tell they'd both taken pieces of each other apart brutally. Neither coming away unscathed, but only the one coming out alive. And he'd been proud!! But? He'd also mourned her loss, as respectable and tenacious and brilliant an enemy as she'd been! As a Senshi who should've stayed order from the word go! How he believed in his heart it would've been better that way---and then? He'd rejoiced at the idea of her returning anew!! *Just. Not. Like. This.*"How I told myself I was the only one who really deserved that honor -- that privilege -- of finally, finally, being the one to kill you," he'd wanted it, surely as he wanted every game of chase they played, as he thrilled for each new 'will she - wont she' scrape through the thin teeth of deaths closing maw one more time!! The way he wondered the same about himself, always! "I've always been a terrible liar though, especially to myself." he tried on a smile like ill fitting clothing meant for a child, felt it fail on his face even as he ate more distance between them. Calling his every sense a lie -- and maybe if he could touch her? He could pierce the truth of the mirage as easily as he could be honest with himself about how he couldn't've done it back then, not every time he had a chance where she was vulnerable and helpless before him. ********, he couldn't even do it now when she was just -- just a ghost -- restless and haunting and terrifying to behold in her own right! "The truth is? It's different in a fight---the energy--the drive. There's times when it feels right and times when it doesn't. The way everyone else just *can* so easily....It shouldn't always *be* a fight, though. You shouldn't have to always keep going on. It's the tiredest ******** argument, I know, but--but Cybs-- Cybs..I'm so ******** sorry you're still here." If he was sorry they'd botched killing her -- or sorry she was unable to die -- or sorry for how she seemed unable to *stop*. He couldn't dodge the weight of her gaze, couldn't shake the way it bore through him, wanted to decry every ounce of suffering she'd felt at their hands!! They'd warned each other though, hadn't they? Knew the risks were equal to the rewards. That death was always on the table. He'd never had questions before---not when knowledge had always felt far more terrifying than it's absence--at least, not until right now. "I'm sorry for all you had to go through--and to still be here? Why--why even bother staying--why come back at all!"
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Posted: Sat Oct 14, 2023 6:04 pm
His full name caught her attention, more than nearly any other thing that could have came out of his mouth would have. He babbled. He said nearly any word under the sun, but not Cybele. He was so, so rarely serious. Here he was, though, saying it, and brought nearly to tears by the fact that she was standing before him instead of sleeping in some grave, or reborn into some cradle. She shook her head, clicking her tongue just once. You're mistaking me for my sister, she thought, her thoughts flicking to the way that the weight of the world and the war had been weighing Ganymede down so much since her kidnapping that she seemed exhausted by life itself. Cybele understood the heavy look in her eyes. Once, she'd had it herself, and to see it broke her heart. Her own eyes, though, were not like that, now. They were tired, but there was a spark of life in them. If anything showed that she was not a ghost, it was that. But I'm a different Princess.She kept the thought close to her heart. "Because my business isn't finished," she told him, instead, and if he backed away under her gaze, that was every reason to keep staring, to take one step forwards, then another. "Because I can't let you have a win." Careful, everyone had told her, and she'd hidden herself away for a while, but in that moment, she knew that this could not be the end of her life as a warrior any more than it was the end of her life as a person. "You talk about starseeds. About pasts, and about the future." He'd tried to claim Ganymede as his sister because of it, and she could only hope that there was no way for him to find out about their previous relationship. Her lip twitched at the thought, but she tried not to let herself become distracted. "And maybe if that future was certain, I would be able to let myself rest for a while." Although, not yet. She wanted to live so badly. She wanted to see this life, this time, this beautiful Earth. She kept that close to herself, too. To tell him would be showing weakness. "But if Chaos takes this world, I don't know that there is anywhere else in the universe that we can live. I don't know that there is a future, that there's happiness waiting in the distance for me or for anyone else." What she really wanted, anyway, was safety and a future for people in this life, but she was trying to word things in a way that Albite would understand. "So, I fought through corruption. I fought through death." Her voice was steady now, louder. "So I'll keep fighting. I'll keep coming back. I'll fight you as a corrupted shell, as a revenent, as a ghost. Even if you shatter my starseed, whatever residual energies are released into the universe will come back to stand in your way. You can be sorry about it, but I'm not." A hint of a shallow smile broke through. "And anyway, I was murdered. Of course I'm back for vengeance." It was half a joke, but she still said it bitterly.
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Posted: Sat Oct 14, 2023 7:21 pm
Even if the Chaos that takes this world looks a lot like me? -- he wondered, yet kept the words back, because every moment longer that he held her gaze told him every answer he'd ever needed to know. He could see it in her eyes, plain as day, bright as the moon. That little spark that had always told him, without err, or fault, or change -- *Yes, you absolute a*****e. Of course the answer is yes!*Even if Chaos looked * exactly* like him, even if she died and came back again ten thousand times more! Cybele would do as she pleased, and what Cybele pleased to do? Was fight, and win, and thwart the ever loving ******** out of him, time and time again. For as long as it took. Maybe even after the fact, just to prove a point? He shouldn't've expected anything less, he nearly felt ashamed!! Standing like a ******** log, wanting to weep at the feet of her ghost and offer her graveside flowers over the sword she'd sworn to live and die by. Even if he didn't think it was fair--- but since when did the cosmos care for what he thought about things? His singular desires and whimsical ideals, small things, when lives were literally on the line, when that very line was ever in flux. When Cybele was literally standing there and telling him as much! "You mean you came back for me? You shouldn't've--" and his laugh was a small ruin of a noise, confused and somber even as he tried to find that part of himself that could always dredge up joy from nowhere, no matter the situation. It felt so wrong to look for it there, at the feet of a ghost---She wasn't just any ghost though, was she? She was Cybele, Senshi of the Hunt. Kicker of asses. Denier of the ******** cauldron and the divine beyond that made them out of stars and into physical bodies---if anyone was going to be sorry about anything going sideways it should’ve been her! And if she wasn't -- than he surely didn't feel like he had any right to be! Not to her face at least. "Also, it's called ' Retribution', deer-heart. Vengeance is for people who don't care bout the world the way you do. S'all wound up in anothers suffering, n personal s**t. Vengeance is 'just for you'. Retribution, though? S'about justice. That desire you have to secure a better future. To make it certain. Sounds a ******** of a lot like justice to me." And the urge to run sat heavy, that need to keep a step between them, that fear of the unknown -- If this Cybele, reborn and wrathful, while not being reborn ********! Was more dangerous than the one before? Worrisome enough that he couldn't help if his gaze slipped to the mists occasionally, watching for an out, watching for the pincers of a trap to come *in*. Ever unable to blame her for her desires, to be that level of hypocritical. Because really? Who the ******** was he to lecture her about vengeance!? When he could only ever see what people wanted most, even the worst things, and if he loved them enough? He’d hand them over to them! To stand physically in the way of her vengeance was an entirely other matter though. He could've welcomed her to it, if it meant going through him and him alone-- but to know her aim as a whole? How vast a span of bodies that likely encompassed. How, certainly, one of those bodies was very much belonged to him, even if that man wasn't his alone. His sorrow suddenly felt selfish, a trite little thing in the face of what was practically an oath that went long beyond death. "I just wish you weren't so ******** terrifying like this---yanno? It is -- no lie —******** me the hell up! But, I also wouldn't wanna see you any other way... I couldn't stand seeing you any other way..." he could barely stand it as it was, how, to him, giving any kind of concession felt as much like welcoming her back as it did signing his own death warrant. Conflicting as all hell in the face of her crystal clear voice, and unwavering sharpness. At least if he was facing Cybele, it was like this! He would've wept otherwise, and he was such an ugly crier! Better that it was like this---"Except, maybe at a funeral? You'd like me at funerals. I'd wear a suit n everything.….and we both know by now how good black looks on me."
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Posted: Sun Oct 15, 2023 1:44 pm
It was strange, that when he tried to crack a joke, even when he thought she'd come back to chase him to the ends of the earth, even when he had mist swirling around his ankles, she could see something in him. She could see something in him that might have cracked through her facade of stone-heartedness a lifetime ago. As he stood there, terrified of her and trying to dredge up something to smile about anyway, she could imagine why another version of her had fallen in love with him. Then he opened his mouth again, and it was gone. In fact, Cybele had to break their stare down in order to roll her eyes. "Albite?" she said, when she looked at him again. "You're mansplaining." She'd managed to pick up a few words from the Internet recently, and none seemed more accurate to what was happening right now than that. The glare was back, the corner of her lips ticking downwards. "What I want for the world is justice, and hope, and a future. What I want for the one who did this to me?" She paused for a moment, because while she knew it was not Faustite standing in front of her, he would be finding out that this had happened, that she still persisted. That meant she had to deliver him a good message. "What I want for him is personal. It is selfish. It has nothing to do with any good that I might have in me." The breath that came through her nose sounded almost like a hiss. "And trust me, it is violent." Her eyes flashed. "I'll crush his starseed between my teeth, and it can be his scattered energy that has to fight to haunt the universe. If you want a funereal, you can go to that one." Dramatic, and perhaps an empty promise, but now that she'd been discovered, she no longer had to be quiet. "Now go," she said, and the mist reminded her of something. She reached into her subspace, and drew forth a metal charm that she'd never dared to touch again before. As she popped off a piece on the top, more mist began to spew forth before forming into a creature that was familiar to her, something half-skeletal and long-limbed and ghoulish. It was something with the skull of an elk and giant antlers protruding from its head. "Tell him I'm coming for him." Shiningamisgirl Metal Charm* - A scratched, circular charm slightly larger than a marble, with unrecognizable runes carved across it This charm is an identical, miniature replica of the prison that trapped the beast in the Halloween 2020 ORP. It seems to function like a little puzzle box; when you unscrew the top metal piece, a haze of fog erupts from the charm and a foggy manifestation of the monster will attack targets for up to five minutes (players have full choice over any damage they choose to receive). The monster will linger in the area where it was summoned and will not move with the Metal Charm or its wielder. The creature does not speak or respond to discussion, but it will attack anyone the wielder considers a threat. After the magic ends, the metal charm is nothing more than a little trinket to play with. Sometimes, it will let out a little puff of fog when twisted in a certain way, but it has no other magical properties and can be kept as a spooky memento!
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Posted: Tue Oct 17, 2023 11:06 pm
“Ummph—-“ never had his mouth snapped shut more quickly, trapjaw on a dry tongue while he swallowed the next sound out his mouth down, pursed his lips and nodded. All the comically high flutterings of fear festering in his guts got set just to the left of his heightened awareness so he could pay exacting levels of attention to the very serious Senshi of ‘Big Girls Don’t Die!’ looming before him — Towering over him, even: grecian, glowing, goddess-like. Even in her ghostly form. The impossibility of that In the lack of light and growing gloom didn’t dawn on him — it seemed real — felt real — Like he was looking *up* to meet her medusa's gaze, and brought to statuesque stillness beneath its weight. Justice for the world — vengeance for herself — the dawning look of horror that crossed his face for her words, the way it melted into his first *true* smile of the night, small, but growing, as he seared each syllable of her newest promise into his mind. Her words cut to the quick, but he bled for them eagerly, easily. As excitable as he had the very first time he met her in the woods. In the crater of a monster's corpse, amongst flattened trees; young and dumb and not knowing any more about Senshi than he did about what made up the air he breathed or the earth beneath his feet. Asking about the stars and telling her how good she looked while being true to herself!! Oh—how he’d learned. His ribs twinged thinking about it, even now, a phantom pang. His soul felt lighter though, to be facing *this* Cybele, changed in only the best ways! Maybe not even changed at all?! Beautiful, deadly, and hunting for blood— He wouldn’t weep anymore for her. He’d suck it up, give her her due. She’d more than earned it, hadn’t she? A place in the stars and the right to haunt his a** unto the ends of the earth — into matching plots alongside his husband — a third one just for her… Just in case.“Oh, I’ll tell him. You’d best ******** believe ********!!” Deer deer deer deer!!! Big, scary, ******** no, deer!!!His magic moved before his mind registered fully what he was seeing, his body far slower to react. A lash of black flaying out in whiplike warning, a startled reaction to a creature whose anatomy he couldn’t possibly comprehend. Since when could she summon — this — this thing!! Had the Christmas deer been hers too!!!?? Was that why she’d left him to it?!? He watched his flail of an attack slash through fog and do absolutely nothing, felt his powers catching on air. As if the creature itself was made of its surroundings, thickening fog that left him half blind and p a n i c k i n g — because even if his magic couldn’t touch it? It sure as hell could touch him! The realization came late as bone met flesh and put him in his back in the freezing fog. <******** you too, Cybbie! So glad to have you back — love the haunting—s’ahgreattime!“ grunted and grit as he tried his damndest not to get gouged, to heave air, to lash out with some sort of precision that would get him free of the next strike. If he kept his head he’d be so lucky — if he remembered to teleport? Because that was a thing — a thing he could do — t e l e p o r t I n g —
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Posted: Wed Oct 18, 2023 3:42 pm
Cybele said nothing more, although she watched for a moment as Albite flailed and struggled against the phantom deer-monster made solid. He'd survive it even if he overextended a bit. She had no doubts about that. He was resourceful like that. Still, it would serve its purpose, giving him something to think about and driving her message home. While he was distracted, she took a few steps backwards, to a spot where the mist was thicker, and she listened past the sound of whips and stomping hooves for the call of her planet. Finding that sensation was something that had used to take so much time and focus, but with how much time she'd spent traveling to Cybele since becoming a Princess, it was a bit easier, and much more familiar, like joining hands with an old friend. So, she held on to that hand, and let herself be whisked away to a forest that was filled with the smell of flowers, and the first stars of twilight, and evening birdsong. She left Albite to deal with the monster, and the memories, and the ghosts.
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