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 Posted: Mon Apr 01, 2024 2:02 pm
Cryptomelane still needed to find a sparring partner, a state of affairs most likely exacerbated by the fact that he hadn’t actually asked for one. The fault lay with him alone, yes, and he knew that. If he wanted anything to happen, then he would need to inquire around amongst the other Lieutenants and basic senshi—or perhaps the Captains and super-senshi if he could find no one on his own level—but………eugh, the mere thought of talking to people—much less admitting a vulnerability to them—made Cryptomelane’s skin crawl and his nerves itch.
As he made his way through some park only a few blocks off from work, pausing in various spots to drain energy off this person or that one, Cryptomelane pondered whether or not he had any other options. Continue getting handily defeated by White Moon opponents whom he ought to have dispatched without a second thought, he supposed. Not a particularly appealing possibility, and not one that Cryptomelane considered a serious option, but technically, he could have struggled against them in the same manner that he already had, simply learning from his mistakes as he went, adapting and devising new approaches based on what had or hadn’t previously worked.
That felt too much like defeat in his mouth, though. Far too much like failure. Losing to the dragon senshi had been the worst, given what his magic had wrought on Cryptomelane, but every other time he lost so horridly, he heard Brother Horace’s voice in the back of his mind, sneering at him that he would never be anything worthwhile without his (alleged) older brother’s permission.…… Allowing his conduct to prove Brother Horace right, Cryptomelane could not accept.
Thinking of that now made Cryptomelane linger longer in the trees where he’d stopped, made him spend more time draining the person who was currently paying tithes to the Negaverse. He hadn’t gone as far as he normally did with any of the others, moving on quickly so as to avoid detection, but the threat of proving himself a failure without Brother Horace behind him……… Bile rose in Cryptomelane’s throat, just thinking about that possibility, and refusal to let that happen made him stick around, determined to take as much of this fool’s energy as he could.
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Posted: Fri Apr 05, 2024 1:27 am
Sonora did not like powering up, right now. She hadn't liked it for several days, if she was honest--ever since that weird night where something had very suddenly felt very off. She'd tried to go to her Wonder to relax and maybe feel better, but even that was blocked.
And there was a buzzing under her skin. Something felt like ti was ready to burst forth, but she couldn't figure out what. It had given her an uncomfortable, restless energy, and it had her out, walking the park, circling the trails like she might figure out what was wrong or....somehow walk it off, she didn't know.
But as she stepped throguh some trees, she spotted a familiar figure--and frowned.
"Hey! You! What are you doing?"
This was the Lieutenant who had killed someone in front of her.
Sonora's heart started racing.
Whatever happened, she couldn't let that happen again.
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Posted: Fri Apr 19, 2024 4:05 am
The approach of a White Moon energy signature did not dissuade Cryptomelane. Could not be allowed to dissuade him. He had work to do and quotas to meet, same as ever, and if some intrepid little fool wanted to try him, then he had to meet them head-on, with confidence and a refusal to bend for them. None of their insistence on small-minded definitions of morality or ethics would help anyone, and Cryptomelane would not be hindered by their failure to realize the perfectly obvious.
When Cryptomelane looked and noticed which White Moon fool thought to interrupt his work, he rolled his eyes.
“I am doing my job, Page Sonora of Ida,” he answered bluntly. “The process doesn’t hurt the donor and you’ll find their starseed perfectly intact.” A blink. Then another. And as the logic of the situation caught up to him, Cryptomelane added, “Well, I suppose that you won’t. But I could briefly remove it in order to prove that I have left it alone and then immediately put it back, if that would satisfy you.”
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Posted: Fri Apr 19, 2024 4:13 am
"Okay, but your job sucks and involves harming people, so maybe don't do your job?" It seemed perfectly obvious to Sonora--if you had to exploit people to do your job, then you just...didn't do that, because people deserved better, and that kind of job would totally be shitty and soul-crushing.
"Like...maybe it's not physically harmful? But it can still hurt them in other ways, by making them tired when they wouldn't be otherwise, and if you drain them until they pass out, they could get hurt by someone else, too." She put her hands on her hips and frowned at him, and that itching under her skin felt stronger, more insistent.
"So how about you leave this poor person alone and go home, yeah? That would be way better for everybody involved."
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Posted: Fri Apr 19, 2024 4:29 am
Watching Sonora attempt to intimidate him was almost endearing, in the same way that some people found it endearing to watch baby animals fail at learning how to walk. The expression he fixed on her was mostly flat, lips pursed and head tilted, eyes not quite squinting but narrowing ever so slightly as they tried to find anything that they might have missed in the image of the petite Ida Page attempting to give him some disappointed expression.
“I could always drain you instead,” he pointed out. Although he didn’t announce what he was doing, she’d already diverted Cryptomelane’s attention off of the civilian and onto her instead. Shifting to draining Sonora’s energy instead didn’t take very much effort at all. “Satisfies the requirements of doing my job, and leaves the civilian alone. I believe that constitutes a win-win scenario, but must admit, there are holes in my understanding of the operative definitions that your faction uses.”
And if Sonora still objected—or if she remained frustratingly committed to non-violence—then Cryptomelane could always get physical with her.
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Posted: Fri Apr 19, 2024 4:42 am
Sonora frowned deeper. This...didn't feel right. But at the same time, maybe it was the best solution? Maybe she ought to let him drain her, if he had to drain someone? Even if this whole scenario felt really bad and she didn't like doing it and she didn't want anybody's energy to get drained at all?
"But why do you have to take anybody's energy? Like, I guess....mine is better..." And she did take a step closer to him, extending her arm, because it seemed like he maybe had to touch people to drain them? So she could maybe...maybe...make that easier? "But that's still not good, you're still taking something that doesn't belong to you. And what do you even do with all that energy? Is it to make more of those youma things?"
She hoped not. Sonora did not like those, especially not when she had to fight them. That was always upsetting. They were just animals, they didn't know any better, but they were also hurting people and...
That was one of the main things Sonora really didn't like about having magical powers. That she was probably supposed to be responsible, but she couldn't even really make herself fight actual monsters.
"Because those are total bad news bears, you know. You really, really shouldn't want to do that."
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Posted: Sun Apr 21, 2024 12:47 pm
“Why does the government need to extract taxes,” Cryptomelane asked without really asking a question because he thought the answer was honestly pretty obvious. The whole thing felt a bit rudimentary, and there was probably someone better suited to having such a conversation with Page Sonora of Ida……but unfortunately, Cryptomelane was the one present here tonight, open to challenging the propaganda that the White Moon had obviously fed her. Cryptomelane was the one who needed to give Page Sonora the respect that her own side had denied her.
“Someone on your own side has done you a great disservice, not telling you what caused this war in the first place,” he said, even pausing his efforts at draining her so that she wouldn’t end up too exhausted and brain-fogged to understand what he told her. “In ages past, a magical kingdom existed on Earth’s moon. Their young, manipulative, senshi princess thought to help her people colonize the Earth, stealing Terran sovereignty out from under the noses of the people who actually lived on this planet. She didn’t even respect the people of Earth enough to take on our ancestors’ forces in combat, to give them a proper chance to defend themselves. Instead, she thought to seduce the young Prince of Earth and sway him over to her way of thinking. Surrendering his people’s freedom to alien overlords because he longed to split open her pomegranate and drink the fresh water of her garden spring, so to speak.”
Even borrowing metaphors from the Song of Songs—metaphors that had stood the test of time and endured despite the countless people like Brother Horace, who thought to misuse them and weaponize them against innocent people—made the whole thing sound unspeakably distasteful to Cryptomelane’s ears. Such, he supposed, was the power of Princess Serenity’s manipulation and Prince Endymion’s shameless selfishness.
“The White Moon senshi of today are Princess Serenity’s modern day inheritors,” Cryptomelane went on, “feeding Earth’s already dwindling resources to worlds that died over a thousand years ago. Giving White Moon senshi and Knights false promises of being able to save people with no actual plan for sustainability. It’s little better than preparing a bunker in case of Armageddon and only caring to save one’s own family. Their Mauvians are absolutely insidious, as well, going after children too young to know that they cannot always trust figures of authority to have their best interests at heart. They say ‘Oh, you’re so special, you have the unique privilege of being a senshi.’ But they leave out how they are actually asking these children to surrender their freedom, their self-determination, and their right to decide their own destiny to an agenda that was created centuries before any of our great-great-grandparents were even a fragment of a potential idea in someone’s mind. Created, again, by people who believed themselves inherently superior to humans and thought that they had the right to subjugate humanity.”
This was more than Cryptomelane was used to talking to……pretty much anyone outside of his dissertation committee, and sometimes, Jupiter Butterfly. Frankly, as much as he could have said more, something in him itched to shut up for a while. But everything he’d had to say was probably very harsh and likely not something that Page Sonora would appreciate hearing, so……maybe he could find it in him to add something……he didn’t know, nicer?
“In the White Moon’s defense, at least your side does stand for something,” Cryptomelane added, not quite gently, but……making a marginal effort to be less blunt. “And at least some of you seem to be simply misguided. But have you seen the other ones in town, with the flouncy gauze on their fukus? The ones who run away into a mirror at the first sign of trouble and act as though refusing to have an opinion makes them better than the rest of us?” Rolling his eyes and shaking his head, he made a grumbling and extremely disapproving noise. “A nominal alliance between our factions prevents me from taking any action against those idiots, lest it lead to mutually assured destruction, but unless they decide to stand for more than their own right to play the fiddle while the world burns down? I will never respect them.”
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Posted: Mon Apr 22, 2024 5:34 pm
Sonora raised her eyebrows. The comparison between energy draining and taxes was....interesting, but she was pretty sure she didn't believe the Negaverse was using the energy to like, build roads and fund libraries and stuff. Whatever they were taking energy for--and she noted very seriously that Cryptomelane did not give her a straight answer about that, so maybe he didn't know or maybe he thought he could bluster past her--she doubted it was to the public good.
She listened to his explanation of the history of the war, and filed that one away as something to ask someone else about, because she doubted that her side was the only one spreading "propaganda," also.
"It sounds really convenient," she said, "to paint this Princess Serenity as some evil moon witch seducing poor precious stupid Prince Endymion. A little misogynistic, actually, if we're being totally honest with each other. And, I mean." She snapped her fan shut and pointed it at herself. "You'll notice I don't serve Princess Serenity. I guess there's a Princess Ida? But everything I've heard about her makes her sound really sweet and selfless, and if she does want to help restore her world...I mean, I've been to Ida, and it's beautiful. I'd want to see it restored, too."
She took a breath. Tilted her head to the side. Considered what he was saying.
"And I think it's impossible to judge a whole faction made up of lots of people based on the worst ones. Maybe there are Senshi who want to rule the world or whatever, but I haven't met any. And, um. Not to put too fine a point on it? But one of us can play judge, jury, and executioner for other human beings, and it's not me. I can't reach into anybody's chest, or drain their energy, or anything like that. So if you guys are in the right....why is it that you can do such awful things?"
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Posted: Tue Jul 02, 2024 3:30 pm
Sonora had several good points. Rationally and intellectually, yes, Cryptomelane could admit that. He wasn’t going to give her more than a hmmm of consideration and a nod, but internally, he could admit that she raised several good points, most of which he didn’t feel that he had any real answers for. Certainly none that Sonora seemed likely to listen to, at any rate, considering their previous encounter with each other and how she’d objected, then.
“Yes, the Negaverse can play judge, jury, and executioner as you say, but have you considered that some people deserve it” seemed unlikely to go over well with someone so hung up on the inherent sanctity of human life. Being entirely fair, she wouldn’t have been wrong to protest that line of thought on practical grounds, either. The great arc of history rarely ever went smoothly for people who took it upon themselves that some other people deserved to suffer. Even if things didn’t go quite as bloodily and explosively as they had for certain dictators Preston could have named, people eventually started to wonder how someone had come into the power to pass such judgments in the first place. Unrest tended to follow, and conflict, and death.
And, yet.……
And, yet.……?
And, yet.……?!
“Does the White Moon pay you for putting yourself in danger as you do on their behalf,” Cryptomelane asked, studiously pretending to look at some civilians a little ways off because he didn’t want to look at Sonora while saying this. “Are there any benefits involved? A clean conscience as per your argument, yes, but I mean, do Knights get health insurance? Do White Moon senshi get dental? Or does whoever runs things for your faction—your princesses, your Mauvians, whoever—expect you all to accept the risk of injury or even death, then handle the costs accrued by work they demanded of you on your own, without any meaningful, material support?”
And, yet, regardless of Sonora’s arguments being perfectly sound and reasonable, despite her honestly having made a good case against the Negaverse, Cryptomelane knew, unshakably, that she was wrong. Perhaps not for herself, but definitely for him. He could still perfectly picture the face of the man who provided all the reason Cryptomelane needed to stay with the Negaverse, to trust in their collective strength.
“I don’t know you well enough to give you my complete answer to ‘Why this,’” Cryptomelane said, still not looking at Sonora, as if doing so would somehow give her an in to notice all of his weaknesses. His deficiencies. “It’s nothing personal against you. My General doesn’t have the full story, either. Nor do any of my colleagues. Three kinds of people in my personal life who know: those who were involved in it; those who needed to know; and………” He hesitated a moment, mentally haggling with himself over the right word to use here, “Mentors, you might call them? Well.”
Cryptomelane huffed and pursed his lips, silently cursing the English language and just all human communication, really. “One of them deserves that title unequivocally. The other is……it’s complicated.” That probably didn’t sound quite how he wanted it to, Cryptomelane realized immediately after saying it. This entire line of discussion (the one that he had created without entirely being prompted) was making his heart writhe in anxiety and his lungs feel violently constricted but this was fine. Cryptomelane could pare things down and embellish enough to avoid getting Dr. Sturm recognized, right?
“He isn’t not a mentor? Certainly, I do value his knowledge and expertise. Some of the work he’s done is groundbreaking even if he only selectively remembers that. But although he tries to pretend otherwise, he often requires a great deal of care that arguably exceeds the normal bounds of a professional relationship and becomes far more personal. I would have preferred him not to learn that which I do not wish to tell you, but it was unavoidable. Had he found out later and not heard it from me directly, it could have hurt him quite badly.”
Mostly, it would have stood to jeopardize Dr. Sturm’s credibility and academic reputation, something he did not need any help with. Ever since his ex had left Virgina for Stanford and Dr. Sturm for whatever she was doing with whom these days, Preston’s advisor and dissertation committee chair had been ruining his own credibility quite sufficiently. One hated to see it, really. And Preston didn’t want to exacerbate anything by not adhering to the ethical guidelines that required him to disclose his personal investment in his own research. Plenty of gorier details, he had largely omitted for the time being and firmly did not want to discuss unless circumstances forced his hand about it. Something like a member of his committee deciding that they really needed to hear about Brother Horace breaking Preston’s wrist or refusing him medication during his youthful asthma attacks.
On the other side of describing Dr. Sturm, Cryptomelane felt like something was off about what he’d said, but he couldn’t quite put a finger on what. None of it was an outright lie, but it also didn’t feel so specific as to risk exposing his identity to Sonora. Still, he had no idea how she was going to interpret what he’d said, and that made him nervous.
“Anyway,” he sighed. “Without getting into all of that? Not needing to worry that a sudden, unexpected expense will put me at risk of not making my rent payments? Or that I might have to choose between food and proper medical care because money’s tight? Certainly makes the Negaverse worth it for me.”
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Posted: Tue Jul 02, 2024 6:49 pm
Sonora took a breath. Let it out.
"No one runs us," she said. "We don't really have leaders. Not like that. I don't serve Princess Ida, I serve an ancient and powerful force called the Code. Which, no, does not provide dental, but like...." She huffed. "I don't need that. I don't need to get paid to do the right thing. This isn't a job, it's like--my soul-born sacred duty? And I don't think they make benefits packages for that."
It felt...icky, to her, on a deep level she couldn't express, to even think of being paid to be a Knight. That wasn't how this sort of thing was supposed to work. Superman didn't pull a salary from the Justice League, did he? And the fact that the Negaverse did pay....
Maybe it was no more coercive than any other kin d of employment in this shitty capitalist hellscape. But she didn't like it. It felt wrong.
Still, his description of his. Mentor. Made her brows knit together. She frowned. This, too, felt--strange. Wrong. Like there was something off. Maybe it was just what Cryptomelane wasn't telling her, maybe she was jumping to conclusions, but...
She'd never forgive herself if she didn't say something.
"You know," she said, gently, "if this man you're talking about--this not-so-great mentor of yours--if he's making you do things you're uncomfortable with, I'm sure there's somewhere you can report him. You don't owe him that kind of protection."
She hoped she was wrong. That Cryptomelane was about to get very offended at her for even suggesting it. But if she was right, and she just let it go, she would have felt awful.
"And I'm sorry. That you have to rely on the Negaverse to make sure your basic needs are met. That's not fair. and it feels a little...exploitative, to me. But I guess I can't really judge."
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Posted: Wed Jul 24, 2024 3:44 pm
As much as he had what might have generously been called an “attitude problem” with most people—and more so when he powered up, he’d noticed—Cryptomelane did listen to Sonora’s answer with an open mind. Better to know all of this than to just have his own ideas that might have been extremely wrong.
Apparently, the ideas that he had concocted were, indeed, extremely wrong…… though also perhaps not? Cryptomelane personally couldn’t hear the phrase soul-born sacred duty without thinking that it sounded at least somewhat manipulative, especially given how young some of the Knights in town were. Sure, the Negaverse sometimes recruited out of the local high schools, but thanks to the salary system, at least they paid the teenagers well.
“I’m not sure I understand the logic of your position,” he confessed, after considering things for a longish moment. “From my perspective, some preordained destiny, and a duty inherent with it? Both imposed upon you by an outside source, based on its opinion of something about you that you have no say in and no ability to control or consent to? That sounds infinitely manipulative to me, and like a system ripe for potential abuse. If the Code means to draft you and other Knights into its service based on the circumstances of your birth, then to my mind, it has an obligation to fairly compensate you. Asking that you accept the satisfaction of a job well done and a moral high-ground feels no different from trying to pay an artist in exposure or an intern in experience.”
He pursed his lips, mulling over whether or not to add something else……but then decided it was better to say it than not: “All of you Knights deserve a union. Organize. Perhaps things are alright for now, but in case the Code ever becomes more exploitative of you or anyone else, having the union would prepare you all to face it and demand better.”
About the only thing Sonora had said that Cryptomelane didn’t meet with an open mind were her comments about his mentor.…… Those, Cryptomelane met with a bemused frown and a tilted head? As he tried to understand what she was saying, and what he had said, and how what he’d said had gotten them to the place they were, and…… Oh, it did rather make sense. Cringing, he sighed.
“……I apologize,” he said, not accustomed to saying the words and actually meaning them. “Inaccurate, inelegant choice of words on my part. I’ve given you quite the wrong impression of the man in question. It’s not—” Shaking his head, Cryptomelane waved a hand at nothing in particular. “The situation is nothing like that, and I didn’t mean to imply that he was taking advantage of me or anything of the sort. Aforementioned mentor…… I respect him a great deal. But one might say that he……hasn’t been well……since his divorce. Coming to work hungover, strong suspicion of drinking on the job, essentially trying with great determination to implode. I’ve been led to believe that the amount of care I take to cover for or clean up after him is not typically within the bounds of our……flavor of working relationship.”
Led to believe such by Dr. Rokugin, whose opinions Preston trusted more than most people’s in general, so it was probably true. Especially as concerned Dr. Sturm’s drinking, Dr. Rokugin could speak from firsthand experience and from his typical position of wisdom. Really, something was going to give sooner or later, and Cryptomelane hoped that it didn’t have anything to do with Dr. Sturm getting sacked or irreparably professionally disgracing himself. Finding a new advisor and dissertation committee chair sounded exhausting.
If things stayed messy for too much longer, perhaps Cryptomelane might need to press on the scales in a more magical capacity. Drain Dr. Sturm’s energy nearly to the point of death without actually killing him, all the better to remind the man that he wanted to live. But ideally, that would not be necessary. Either way, Cryptomelane could deal with such possibilities in the future, if at all.
In the present, however—“Pleasant conversation or not,” Cryptomelane said, “I do have work to do, if you don’t mind.”
The civilian he’d originally been draining had moved on, but a new one had since taken their place, wandering into the clearing as hapless as a lamb to slaughter. Pulling starseeds had not yet seemed to teach Sonora much, aside from how little she approved of it, and in fairness, Cryptomelane had not planned to pull any right now. Still, he shifted a bit away from her, then tried to start running, his hand outstretched, grabbing for the civilian’s back.
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Posted: Wed Jul 24, 2024 4:18 pm
Sonora shook her head. They were clearly at a sort of philosophical odds--or perhaps they simply didn't see being powered in the same way. Which, maybe, went back to the ways it worked for them--if he expected her to have a leadership to report to, perhaps he had one, then. It would track, with the Negaverse seeming so military.
Ick.
"I just....don't see it that way. Because I could go home, tonight, and put down my fan, and never power up again. I could pretend that all of this didn't exist and wasn't my business. It would be so, so easy, and the Code couldn't do anything about it." Or, at least, she figured it couldn't. Maybe she would eventually just stop being Sonora, and someone else would inherit the power, or something. But that would still leave her free from the war. "Can you do that? If you decided you never wanted to be Cryptomelane again, would your superiors let that happen?"
Maybe they would. Maybe she was wrong, twice over--and it was a real relief to hear that the problem wit Cryptomelane's mentor/advisor/whatever, she'd never been to college, it wasn't like she knew was just that he was having some serious post-divorce problems with alcohol, and not that he was having....other....post-divorce problems.
"Okay,t hat's good, that--I mean, it's good of you to cover for him, it sounds like he needs someone on his side."
Really, Cryptomelane wasn't so bad--except--
"Hey, wait, no!" Sonora launched after him, as fast as she could, and as she moved, something in her changed.
The sudden new power gave her a burst of speed to get ahead of him, and between him and the civilian, and so she could snap open her fancier new fan and call on magic that welled up under her fingers.
A shimmering golden shield appeared around her and the poor, hapless idiot, and she fixed Cryptomelane with a firm stare.
"No," she said. "Not today."
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Posted: Wed Jul 24, 2024 4:53 pm
Cryptomelane didn’t notice Sonora’s power increasing. He didn’t notice the new outfit, or the fact that she moved ahead of him. In fact, barely noticed anything at all until he smacked, face-first, into the wall of shimmering golden light.
As he clattered down to the ground, falling right on his backside, he felt shame rising, hot and sick, to his cheeks. Before doing anything else, he checked to make sure his glasses remained intact. Thankfully, they had, and so Cryptomelane looked up at Sonora. At the shimmering golden light around her and the civilian. Then down at the orchids that had blossomed around her.
He huffed.
“Incredibly inconvenient,” Cryptomelane grumbled, “but the victory tonight seems to be yours.” Getting back to his feet, he dusted himself off, and once standing, he nodded. “Until next time, Sonora.”
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