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 Posted: Sat Mar 30, 2024 7:15 pm
Humiliating losses had haunted Cryptomelane for the vast majority of March, it seemed. He hadn’t fallen behind on meeting his quotas for draining energy and/or stealing starseeds. Thankfully, the energy presented didn’t need to come from the idiots and liars who made up the White Moon’s forces, though presenting the orbs and starseeds he had harvested from their senshi and especially their Knights did give Cryptomelane a very special rush of satisfaction, when it came time to turn in the night’s offerings. By all numerical accounting, Cryptomelane had done nothing wrong this month and had failed absolutely no one.
And yet, he felt like an absolute failure.
No matter what the objective numbers said, his losses to certain interloping White Moon wastes-of-space rankled deeply. Every time he powered up, they burned like an itch in the back of his throat, except that coughing offered him no promise of relief. As he stalked through some park near-ish to the university campus—Juniper Park? Mayberry Park? Aprilwood Park? something ridiculous and inane like that—and tried to ignore all the thoughts and reminders that, come midnight, it would be Easter Sunday, Cryptomelane fumed with a feeling of utter impotence. It wasn’t how he wanted to feel in the Negaverse. It wasn’t who he wanted to be for the Negaverse.
All the reminders of the looming holiday only added insult to Cryptomelane’s injured pride. Everywhere he looked were pictures of rabbits, or posters advertising someone’s Easter egg hunt, or boxes of Evangelical tracts presenting the same “Jesus Is the Reason For The Season” garbage that they trotted out at Christmas, but flavored differently for Easter. The bleach-bright White Moon aura rankling on Cryptomelane’s senses annoyed him, but not nearly as much as all the reminders of Easter.
……Until he got close enough to see that the aura was coming from a rabbit.
Rather—more accurately—from a senshi who bore an unmistakable set of rabbit ears, a fluffy tail, and paws on his feet to boot.
Distantly, Cryptomelane recognized what this meant: the senshi at whose back he stared was one of the aliens, like the dragon senshi who’d given Cryptomelane so much trouble earlier in the month, who’d stuck him with memories of Brother Horace and feelings with which Cryptomelane but that refused to simply leave him be. Distantly, he recognized that it was his duty, as an officer of the Negaverse, to fight off these invaders and protect the Earth or something like that.
But far more viscerally, the absolute nerve of this senshi to be a rabbit made him see red. Before he could recognize what he was doing and think of something more dignified, Cryptomelane swung his pumpkin bucket like a hammer-thrower and hurled it toward the rabbit-senshi’s head.
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Posted: Sun Apr 14, 2024 1:51 pm
Stribor was not doing so well. Apparently, there was some silly holiday happening tomorrow—the reason for all of the pale, pastel colored rabbits all over everything and the abundance of eggs. Eggs that the mysterious Easter Bunny hid in the world for the children to find. Where did this creepy bunny get the eggs? Nobody seemed to have a solid answer, but many people joked that this rabbit laid them himself! Which was not how any of that worked! And just the other night, some brat had called him Peter Cottontail—of course, the child couldn't have known Cottontail was an insult on his planet, but it still rankled! And this, apparently, was one of the various names given to the Easter Bunny, which he'd found out after he complained to his roommates. So he was more than a little agitated already by the time he'd gone on patrol and was subsequently attacked. He snarled, whirling around after the bucket collided with his head, and glared at the Negaverse Agent with a white-hot stare for just a moment before he cast his magic with the most scathing tone he could muster. "Gentle Whisper!" amorremanet Stribor speaks the name of his attack and a swirl of soft wind picks up around him, spreading a soft whisper into the ears of everyone in range—a quiet urge, a soft plea, in an indistinct voice. The need to be gentle hits them with it, forcing them to pause in any violent actions they may be committing and making them hesitate to commit more. This attack lasts for 25 seconds, has a radius of eight feet, and has three uses.
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Posted: Sun Apr 21, 2024 11:28 am
The magic hit Cryptomelane and his actions ground to a halt. Eugh—why was senshi magic always so much Like This? Always with the mind-altering effects that made one less inclined to act, or inhibited one’s ability to do so. That imposition on his will only inflamed Cryptomelane’s anger at the situation. Gritting his teeth, he glared at the rabbit senshi, with his heinously offensive little ears and his furry little feet that were so impossibly, unspeakably hateful.
“This won’t last forever,” Cryptomelane snarled. “Maybe I’ll take your starseed when it expires. As a personal kindness, I’ll even do it gently.”
The incantation that the rabbit senshi used had involved the word Gentle. Even without knowing what the rabbit senshi’s actual sphere of magic was, gentleness seemed like a safe bet and therefore, something to throw in his face.
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Posted: Fri Apr 26, 2024 1:37 am
Stribor stomped his foot involuntarily, crossing his arms and glaring at the Negaverse Agent who clearly just had some kind of problem with Stribor existing. His ears even bent a little bit in a forward motion, almost like he was readying them to use like horns or something—the classic anger droop of his kind. "Aw, how sweet of you, very romantic," he said, sarcasm dripping from every word. "Please, go ahead and try, because I'll just cast it again." Now his hands moved to his hips and he tilted his head. "I'm just curious—why exactly did you choose to come smack someone doing nothing but having a bad time already?"
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Posted: Tue May 28, 2024 3:25 pm
“What, do you think you’re the only person alive who’s having a bad time,” Cryptomelane sneered. “Or do all of you with the White Moon actually think that everything is always about you personally?”
He avoided answering the actual question that the rabbit-senshi had asked him, largely because he couldn’t answer it.…… Well. Cryptomelane could have done, if he’d wanted to bother wasting breath on it. But everything he could think of to say for himself almost made his work for the Negaverse sound downright morally questionable, and he didn’t trust some sanctimonious White Moon idiot not to tell him so.
And this particular White Moon idiot wasn’t Sonora, so Cryptomelane’s desire to indulge him in any intellectual discussions, plain and simple, did not exist.
Briefly, Cryptomelane considered whether or not to say more—but as he pondered the question, he felt the senshi’s magic waning. Even though some sense of it lingered, telling Cryptomelane that he should perhaps reconsider and not attempt what he was thinking, he knew far better than to listen to such feelings. They were, after all, literally the White Moon trying to get inside his head with their magic. Pretending to look at something off to the left, Cryptomelane took a deep breath.
Then, he threw himself at the rabbit-senshi, running with a mind to tackle him.
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Posted: Tue Jul 02, 2024 5:54 pm
"Gentle Whisper," Stribor growled under his breath, watching the Agent tense. His magic didn't come. He felt it rise and then abruptly fail to start, snuffing out like a candle. What? What? Aw, shi—the tackle hit him dead on and he grunted with pain, using the momentum to let themselves fall, taking the hit as carefully as he could on his back and then attempting a roll backwards to get the advantage—if he could flip them so he was on top, he could try to hold the man down for a minute or something, maybe call for help?
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Posted: Tue Jul 02, 2024 6:14 pm
The rabbit-senshi easily managed to tug Cryptomelane into rolling, because Cryptomelane felt incredibly distracted by what had happened immediately before. He’d heard the incantation, but none of the troublesome magic had interrupted to stick him in place or make him hold his actions. He didn’t feel any more inclined toward gentleness. Sprawled out on his back, bemusedly wrinkling his nose up at the rabbit-senshi, Cryptomelane felt the same way that he felt when confronted with anomalies in need of repair.
“What was that,” he said, extremely blunt. “No senshi who’s fought me has ever had their magic fail them like that before.” He hummed, thinking about what he knew of White Moon senshi (not very much, but he’d read the Negaverse training manuals). “Negaverse senshi get their magic from their connection to our Queen, so where does yours come from? Is something obstructing you? Or dampening the strength of the connection?”
If that could happen to a senshi who’d come here from literal outer space, then what if something tried to get between Metallia’s connection to her own senshi?
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Posted: Tue Jul 02, 2024 6:23 pm
Stribor had been completely ready to start smacking his guy around when he got the upper hand, but then the Agent surprised him with his questions. Really? Now? He couldn't help but laugh a little. Mostly in disbelief. He'd fought in a war this man could scarcely comprehend. He'd been through hell and back and put to sleep for a thousand years. His magic had failed him at one of the worst possible moments and he didn't even understand why—was his connection to his planet that tenuous? Had the civil war ******** him up that thoroughly? "What's the knowledge worth to you?" he asked sharply, glaring down at Cryptomelane. "If you want to know something so personal, we should have an even exchange, don't you think?" He kept his hands on Cryptomelane's shoulders, legs tight around his torso. Didn't want to be surprised by anything else that might happen tonight.
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Posted: Tue Jul 02, 2024 6:40 pm
Cryptomelane frowned up at the senshi, feeling very lost in the face of that response. None of it sounded unreasonable, but at the same time—“What, do you expect me to have some deep emotional attachment to a screwdriver,” he said, not per se kindly but also not trying to be an a*****e. He was just saying things that seemed perfectly commonsense and obvious to him. “How is a question like ‘Why didn’t that attack work as expected’ even remotely personal? Your magic is a tool, same as any other weapon. Are you equally invested in your gardening implements?”
The senshi probably gardened. He was a rabbit. This idea just made sense.
Rolling his eyes, Cryptomelane huffed. Wasn’t like he could do much else until he got the rabbit sufficiently off his guard. “What do you want to know? The specific nature of the inquiry is going to affect whether or not I play along.”
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Posted: Tue Jul 02, 2024 7:08 pm
Stribor stared at him for a moment, flabbergasted and slack-jawed. What? Screwdriver? Gardening implements?? What did this utter fool think about magic and where it came from, exactly? "I'm curious why my being a rabbit infuriated you," he said a bit dryly, "Because I know why my being a rabbit pissed me off this time of year. But the audacity of that question..." He shook his head sadly, relaxing minutely, trying to stay on guard but also hoping that showing a little slack to the guy would help them remain on... truce-y terms. Even though he was even more thoroughly pissed off—this guy was fighting so hard for a cause he knew so little about... "Where does your magic come from?" he asked, though he knew. "Metallia, yes? You are empowered by someone whom you believe in strongly. Almost religiously. White Moon senshi?" He gestured to his bodice. "We are given power through the planet we represent. And those of us who are truly alien... who weren't born human and given an inherited burden they don't understand..." His eyes went a little glassy. "We saw our entire planets full of people perish. Genocide after genocide after genocide."
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Posted: Wed Jul 03, 2024 8:13 pm
Cryptomelane listened to the rabbit-senshi with as open a mind as he could manage at present, but the fact that this senshi reacted so negatively to someone just asking questions out of scientific curiosity didn’t bode well, he thought. Certainly didn’t reflect well on the rabbit-senshi that he couldn’t handle someone being curious about the hows and whys of his magic.
Tearing up didn’t reflect in any particular way on him, Cryptomelane thought—at least, on an intellectual level. Emotionally, he tensed up at the sight of tears forming in the senshi’s eyes, and the threat that they could spill over at any moment made Cryptomelane’s heart race. Ugh, he hated displays of emotion like this. Watching other people cry, hearing children wail and scream at the store, asking someone if they were using a book in the library and getting treated to a meltdown about seventeen different things that they’d clearly kept pent up for a while
“……Not that I imagine it helps when the dead remain dead,” Cryptomelane said, after thinking for a long moment. “But technically, what happened to your worlds wasn’t genocide. That term refers specifically to a concentrated effort to destroy a group of people because they are who they are, and who they are is different from who someone else is. Because they’re of a different religion, or they have a different ethnic background, or they have different genders or romantic practices, and some other group decides this makes them worthy of extermination.”
The rabbit-senshi must have learned the word since coming to Earth, as it hadn’t been coined until 1944, but considering how many people on this planet used the term incorrectly, it probably wasn’t the rabbit-senshi’s fault that he was doing the same. “Destruction of an entire world’s population, whether by war, famine, plague, or just the inevitability of death, is a tragedy of a different sort. Different from the organized, deliberate nature of a genocide. And……not that I imagine it helps in any materially significant way? But it sounds unlikely that any of you spacefaring senshi lost your worlds to genocide. The entire point of them is one specific group destroying another, not complete obliteration. So, it……”
Sighing heavily, Cryptomelane wished very badly that Sonora were here instead. She seemed like she would be good at handling……emotions in this way. Cryptomelane hated talking about them and strongly preferred to just do something like leave Jupiter Butterfly one of her favorite brownies as a treat and never speak of it again. “Your people being wiped out is unlikely to have been the work of another group deciding that you had some inherent defect about you that meant you did not deserve to live.”
He said it with the cadence of someone trying to offer comfort. It came out awkwardly and with a great deal of strain, but still, Cryptomelane made an effort.
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Posted: Wed Jul 03, 2024 11:51 pm
At first, Stribor didn't quite know what to make of this reaction. Part of him was angry at being corrected over something he considered minor—but... the tone... he let out a sharp, sad laugh, ears drooping. "Sorry, you just... you remind me of someone I lost." he rubbed at his eyes, realized he was still sitting on the fellow he'd somehow engaged in pleasant conversation with despite the intent of fighting, and swept himself off the agent. "Candace was a lot like you. All into science, couldn't relate without spouting about explosive chemical reactions." He offered a hand to help the agent up, ears slowly rising to half-mast. "I, uh. I just want to get strong enough to fix my home. I know it won't bring anyone back. But I want to taste the berries of my homeland again and watch the migration of the shalopes. Not take your home from you."
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Posted: Thu Jul 04, 2024 2:43 am
When the rabbit-senshi finally clambered off of him, Cryptomelane sat up easily. Not that this helped him understand what was happening any better, because……well. He didn’t. The words that the rabbit-senshi used all made sense individually, but the sudden shift into……speaking decently? Even if Cryptomelane had technically been the one to start it by trying to make the rabbit-senshi stop crying? Recalibrating for this kind of conversation was proving incredibly taxing.
“I……I’m sorry. For what you lost.” He took a deep breath, then accepted the rabbit-senshi’s hand in getting up. “And……I’m sorry for lashing out at you.” Which confused Cryptomelane greatly to be saying, especially on the realization that he largely did mean it. “It—the attack genuinely wasn’t about you. This time of year is just………bad. For me, personally.”
Which was the full extent of what Cryptomelane was willing to discuss about that matter with someone he’d only just met. He’d barely discussed more than that with people he actually knew, never mind the idea of doing so with someone new.
“And……for whatever it’s worth, I hope you get to taste your world’s berries again someday. That……” Cryptomelane sighed. “Simple pleasures such as that are well worth fighting for.”
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Posted: Thu Jul 04, 2024 1:09 pm
"I understand. I'm sorry, for what you've gone through, as well. It... probably doesn't compare to being hassled about being the Easter bunny and have I laid any colorful eggs recently," he said a bit dryly, rolling his eyes. His ears went fully erect again, calm, relaxed. "I appreciate your kind words. Get some rest, take your mind off it. Maybe buy some chocolate that's on sale." His lips quirked up in mild amusement. "Just make sure it wasn't laid by any rabbits. I don't think that would be anything chocolate flavored."
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