Spiders have settled in all across town, and while this isn’t normally any great cause for concern, inky black spiders are oddly common. The spiders themselves are not very threatening–small, nonpoisonous, and cowardly. The interesting thing about them is their black webbing–and the strange designs they make. Webs appear overnight, often seeming to come out of nowhere. They are curiously designed, almost as if made to deliberately spell out something. People all over town have mentioned finding webs that spell out a single word, or part of a sentence. Maybe it’s just imagination, but as the days go on, the words seem to be clearer–and the messages are often uncomfortable or distressing. There’s no evidence that the spiders can spell or are trying to send messages, but really–is it that hard to believe? Once a spider has left a message, it disappears. They are masterful escape artists and cannot be caught. There’s no telling what the spiders want you to know, but maybe if you’re lucky one will leave you a message you understand.
It was with gentle warmth and semi-gruff put-uponness that Reed reached out to Amora for help in this, what he hoped to be, tiny matter. He hadn't expected his workless week to be filled with work, and yet? Here he stood, looking at a singular stone engraved with the name of a long lost friend, the entirety of a grave made garden overrun -- and this time not with wicked blight and space ooze.
No, instead this time it was with spiders.
So while he was grateful in one for the fall season upon them. How it meant some solid time off from work for him, and fall breaks for his students, and -- any deal of other things, truly. He was also wickedly tired. What should've been a few days of raking, and plucking, and journaling. A gentle clean up of generalized mulchy debris -- it was quickly becoming a task he'd have to overtake with aid instead of without. He couldn't discern the creatures natures, their species, whether a giant mother of one lay behind a log or within a stony holes hollow---
Better to be safe than sorry and call the healer, just in case he got his overzealous self stung, or worse? Because in Destiny City there could always be a worse lurking behind some corner.
"No, and I'm sorry this is so last minute....I don't think I've had you out here yet...It's....It's easier to explain when you come and see it, actually?" As if trying to walk his way around landmines filled with nettles rather than explain himself properly. "I can ping you the coordinates though, yes my dear you'll want to have some protection for this one. It's -- a rather hideous debacle. Honestly it'd be pretty if not for...well..." he waived at the empty air, kicked a stick into an overfull pile of leaves and watched them flutter up from their wet dearth. Typically he liked the sorts of creatures in his garden spaces that did away with any number of pests!
Typically he liked spiders---
But not these ones and not this many and not in this sheer scale and size of infestance. Even if the webs held an eerie glint of almost alluring ambiance, especially when coated with early morning dew.
"It doesn't hardly matter. It is my land afterall...hahhh...I'll bring lanterns..mmhnmm....I'll see you later then." With a click he hung up, and at the aforementioned time? He appeared, cloaked in a generals guise and waiting with eager patience to offload every lingering bit of too much pestilence thaqt'd made his space near unmanageable even for the typical forest life. He'd even brought supplies along, and the space he'd cleared for them looked more like a setup for an expedition into the unknown than the typical gardeners fair. Trash bags and cans to line them, rakes, a blowtorch and aerosol that sat wrapped in red like ribbon and appeared made ready as some last resort and final ditch of an effort.
For Prehnite didn't know what magical fire would do to the things -- to the place as a whole -- if that would be the end all be all of an attempt -- to whip out butane and torch the place and begin again. He groaned up at the waning light and burgeoning moon in hopes that it wouldn't quite come to such extreme measures, and pretended he didn't see one more web slip idly into a once empty space.
Posted: Tue Oct 15, 2024 4:06 pm
When the call had come to her phone Amora had instinctively flinched. But the number that flashed up on the call display had not been a strange one like before, but instead the number that only Reed had. Thinking back on that phone call from the unknown number had Amora still relatively nervous. Was it more of the seasonal abnormalities that went on, or something more dire? Either way, it had left her extremely shaken. For that voice on the other end of the line had sounded exactly like her. The voice's owner had known things; had told her things that, upon reflection, could not have been true...
Unless.
Unless what had been told to her had indeed been a lie from the very start. That was always now the elephant in the room for the young woman. Okay, more like in her mind as she had yet found any sort of courage needed to take the steps needed to force a conversation about the topic. Until she found that courage though it ate away at her. She mentally poked and prodded over the possibility, like one would poke and prod at a loose tooth. But even that was something that Amora wasn't sure about if her analogy was correct because that was some sort of memory of her past that had been lost to her as a result of the accident Reed had said she had been involved in.
It was with marked hesitation then that Amora had picked up the call only to hear from Reed that he needed her assistance with a chore that sounded much like some sort of massive cleanup effort. As Reed had promised the coordinates to where they were to meet arrived moments later. Along with the time of day that they were to meet up at. There was a marked moment of silence as she stared down at the coordinates before she put them through Google's mapping system to see where she would be needed for the evening. Once that was done she picked out the best place that would serve as a teleportation arrival point. That done, Amora decided that a rest was in order.
Hours later found Amora drawing on the power that allowed her to be Hylonome before she fixed the position of where she wanted to appear in her mind before disappearing. Her intended destination would leave about a five minute walk to where Reed (okay Prehnite) would be waiting for her. Even as she appeared in the location that she was aiming for could she sense Prehnite's aura and she steered herself to head off in the direction that it was emanating from. What seemed like minutes later did the Senshi of Edelweiss push through a bit of tangled overgrowth into a clearing. Her tongue clicked against the roof of her mouth as she stared at the structure that was in disarray before she sighed, "you weren't kidding when you mentioned needing help, were you?"
"Amora--" and his smile did soften some for her appearance, finding the gem of a senshi not only on time but having found her way down a path that was usually better cleared out. He was glad to see her and it showed in the way he relaxed by slow degrees, how the lines left his face; an ease of tension leaving him looking younger than he felt (and he would complain he felt old in spite of being under a hundred!) "-- and I know, I know....just look at this..." his sigh a wearied and worrisome thing as he threw his arms out at the surroundings; his entire kingdom for a rake, he would've sworn.
"It must seem silly, truly? To power up for something as menial as this---" he tsk'd, but didn't chide the usage of powers for the greater good. There was something to be said for Metallias talents being multi-faceted, good for battle as they were for digging holes and pushing mulch....and in this one rare instance? Thwarting spiders. "But it's gone beyond even my human managing. Between the blight two years prior -- and this infestation now? I don't even think I can get to the headstone I'd been meaning to clean up....." Wincing even as he looked back to her, as he truly took note, he realized it'd been long enough that maybe he should've done more than beckon and call for aid in tasks....
Or -- well -- he supposed he'd at least count himself in good standing for having been polite enough to ask rather than yank her out of her own private affairs. Or whatever she'd had planned for the evening? If anything, which -- he really should've asked. The realization of such struck him after the fact.
"If I'm interrupting you for the night? I do apologize, I promise I can make it up once we're done. I suppose I could've also called on Sodalite, or the others....but?" he could've called on anyone, but if it was going to be long hours and hardships, then why not her? Who spoke plainly, was sharp, witty. Who he felt he got along with enough that she wouldn't feel patronized by his asking.
tefla
Posted: Tue Oct 15, 2024 9:10 pm
If there was one thing that she could reassure Prehnite with, it was that she had been not doing anything of dire importance. Releasing a sigh Hylonome moved to stare at the black webbing that had been strewn around the area before giving the most thoughtful of noises. "I had no plans so it wasn't much of a decision to provide aid. I mean there's been no assignments given out to us at the moment that I've not been made aware of, has there?"
If there had been assignments doled out then she was seriously slacking in her duties. Moving to examine the table's contents Hylonome donned a pair of gloves before looking over the mess that awaited both her touch and Prehnite's. "I am kind of surprised though that you reached out to me." On second thought, was the correct thing to say to her general? There was a moment's pause before she sighed, "if that came out wrong, I'm sorry. It's been a while since we've done something like this together."
Pulling on a plant that seemed like it didn't belong there Hylonome glanced over her shoulder to gauge Prehnite's response. It was true that they hadn't done anything like this for a while. But that blame probably fell on her because of the feeling she had been having for months now that something wasn't exactly right with the world. There was a marked hesitation in her voice before she asked Prehnite, "besides clearing up this place, what else do we need to do out here?"
The sight of more black webbing was drawing her curiosity to the inhabitants that were at the moment, out of sight. What made their webs black? That wasn't a normal color for spider webs, was it? Her breath came out in a small huff as she tugged more forcefully on the stalk of the plant she was attempting to remove. With a sound of victory the plant separated from the ground and she threw the vegetation over her shoulder. Her gaze caught on the web once more and was that a word in the center?
"No, you're fine--" his smile stayed soft as it'd started, falling into step as Hylonome moved to one section of her own accord. "Truly? I haven't heard of anything since the opening of that club." A sour note in his tone, because of all the ideas? A club. One of which he'd staunchly refused to go to the grand opening of, General or not? It wasn't his scene, he was a homebody, and? More importantly? He'd not wanted any run ins with students of any kind of the present or former variety.
"I feel like that too sometimes, you know. Like the mission becomes my job and the job becomes my life---" he winced as he started on a patch all his own, deciding to cut away a swath of webbed up dead branches as a whole. He wondered if he should offer her his second weapon? The way he had to Hatsya so many a time, to others as well. It was the one part of dual wielding that he found handy. "There's no harm in seeing me in that light. So I thought there'd be even less harm in shaking things up a little? I do -- I wish to be a person instead of a profession -- at least sometimes. Even if the act of going about it comes off as -- hmn -- rusty? Inauthentic?" He shrugged as if he didn't find it bothersome, his own awkwardness, his prickly nature, that they were faults of his he was willing to suffer through for the sake of being some of what he preached to others.
"Here --- you should try this --" watching her struggle, it did make sense to give her something sharp, to offer up that second dagger without a second thought behind it. "It'll help-- and I was coming out here to meet an old friend. To -- pay homage?" He tsk'd to himself gently as he stepped back over a pile made worse by webbed up rot, lamenting not coming out here far, far sooner than now.
tefla
Posted: Wed Oct 16, 2024 1:18 am
Her eyes weren't playing tricks on her? Were they? Blinking quickly Hylonome turned away from the webbing that she had been staring at as Prehnite brought her attention to his weapon that he was offering to her to use. Her hands gripped the blade before she stared down at it. This was a bit of a marked hesitance in accepting the offering. Truly, wasn't it better to use her own power to work on things? In the end though Hylonome turned from Prehnite and moved to tackle another plant before she nodded with satisfaction. Using the bladed trowel would definitely make it easier to clear the tangle of weeds from the area.
The senshi was silent for a moment before she thought back on what Prehnite had just mentioned as being an assignment that had been in the works, "Oh, that is something new. Night clubs."
What exactly had gone on at the night club? Considering the fact there didn't seem to be anything negative in the media about a new opening business, perhaps that was a good thing and it meant that everyday citizens of Destiny City were safe ... for the most part.
"I'm pretty sure I wouldn't vibe with the night club scene either. It's just not my thing."
Another plant met its demise at the blade's sharp edge and Hylonome drew it back before encountering more webbing, "Hey Prehnite, just what is this stuff? In my life I've never seen black spider webs out in nature...at least not that I can recall."
Leaning in closer to pluck at the black strings, Hylonome felt a shock travel through her. There was a word buried in there ... liar. Her head tilted to the side before her hand dashed through the strands. Were the spiders trying to tell her something?
"It is rather tame as far as most endeavors go -- it's no hospital, but?" He supposed it was something, it kept their people employed, on measure, it gave a public space to conduct their activities in, and maybe best of all? At least from what he'd heard, it allowed them to eschew some of the darker aspects of maiming and draining that had so long been a caste of old commanders and prior affairs.
"It makes sense I suppose, given the amount of young agents in the field..." his voice light as he stepped apart once more and listened over his shoulder to her going at it. Pleased for every blight ichored and web soaked thing cut away. He liked the place natural looking, it was in nature after all, but not unseemly as this.
"I heard the Aliens pioneered this safer technology -- ah -- Lyndin and his people? I find it funny now. The way I'd questioned their purpose so heavily back then..." and he hummed and shrugged as her ask caught him to the right, he titled his head and stared at the webbing a bit more thoroughly, puzzling out his own answer. "To be truthful? I don't quite know. That's maybe the other reason why I called you out here -- you're abilities might come in handy -- should I poison myself in the middle of this somehow. I wasn't sure if it was a hold-over from the land being blight cursed? If that tainted the creatures living in it thereafter..."
Which he thought, with much hope, might explain the overabundance and strangeness. That his land was still cursed even in its long stages of recovering.
tefla
Posted: Wed Oct 16, 2024 3:33 pm
"My abilities coming in handy? I don't know about that. At best I think my magic is acting like an analgesic. It relieves the pain but doesn't treat the underlying cause of the pain. I don't know if it would help here in regards to if someone got poisoned. Might delay things but that's all."
Even as she was voicing that concern did Hylonome attack another overgrown bush. Just because Prehnite spoke highly of her abilities it didn't mean that she had to doubt things. Instead of focusing on that though she grimaced at the reveal of what had been happening while she had been preoccupied. The idea that the Negaverse had some new method of gathering energy was both a blessing and a curse. The technology being provided by the alien group that had been amongst the crowd when she had been barely aware of things after that large battle made her eyes widen in surprise, "That's interesting. I didn't realize that we are still relying on them."
But having her thoughts turn back to the matter at hand Hylonome had to wonder now if there was a deeper meaning to Prehnite's words about her abilities. If she had been forcibly corrupted, was that the reason why. Her gaze turned away from the general before moving off to the side to examine another web. This one, too, held a word: wrong.
What was going on? Were these messages directed solely at her? Biting her lip in worry Hylonome peered over her shoulder to where Prehnite was going to town on his own section. 'Liar and wrong. Were these words always here or are these creatures trying to hint at something? How would they know who would be here ... or are they watching right now?'
There was a chill that caused Hylonome to shiver and back away from the spot where she had been working. Sentient spiders? Was that a thing? And were they indeed trying to warn her about something. Something being wrong and a liar to boot?
"Prehnite ... can you tell me more about what I was like before I was injured."
Perhaps she could throw him off a little and get some sort of clue to whether or not he had told her the truth or a lie before.
"Sometimes five minutes is all a person needs--if I could catch one of the little pests to see. Etymology is not my area of expertise, but I do have a friend at the college. Even a few more within the agency who are rather prone to handling the creepier, crawlier parts of this venomous world..." he sighed fondly, poisons were his specialty, plants, flora. All its beauteous ilk, but bugs?
The humm he gave in offer next, the equivalent of a verbal shrug, truly? He hadn't been aware of it either, to what depth and extent their Queen brokered deals with their newest -- gods -- he wouldn't go so far as to call them allies? Not with how disastrous that first meeting had been. It felt closer to working with shadowed, gray area lizard folk than actual beings of the stars.
The way he could imagine there was no shared loyalty, that the aliens were out for their own, that -- and whatever benefits they received from them? He wasn't sure it was any kind of equivalent to what they were being given...
Whatever that novel thing was -- safe haven? Homeworld? A place to study? He didn't bother involving himself once that mission had come and gone, been said and done. Her next question caught him only slightly off guard, had him pulling up from a stooped position with a clump of cut shrubbery in hand.
"Before...." he said the word slowly, dragging out time, short circuiting through whatever answers he'd given her once, what he could pull together now without looking suspicious. Prehnite stood slowly and swallowed, searching the overfilled space and the empty night sky for an out where none existed. "....I don't know how appropriate it is to dwell on the past, what it'd help? But if you'd truly like to discuss it...I mean...I imagine you're not much different now, are you?"
It felt wrong even as he'd said it, like a misstep and a lie, the way he knew he should've brushed her off instead, claimed to have known her so distantly that he couldn't tell her how she'd been at all. That -- even if an omission -- would've been nearer to the truth.
But he'd already opened his mouth---
tefla
Posted: Wed Oct 16, 2024 10:13 pm
There was a moment in which Hylonome's hands stilled over the plant in which she was about to cut through before what Prehnite had said registered in her ears. Something clenched around her heart for a moment. Was it fear? That Prehnite either didn't want to or couldn't tell her what she was like before lend credence to the facts that were slowly adding up in her mind? Her eyes lowered to the ground before she visibly deflated. Was this more proof that things were not as they appeared to be? Hylonome's eyes flicked back to the word "wrong" that still remained in the web. How did one react to something like this?
Her words, seemed to be filled with lead, as she sighed, "I see."
Picking up the trowel once more Hylonome moved to another section before she simply dropped the trowel. Her whole body turned around to face Prehnite before she shot an irritated glare at him, "It matters to me. I mean, according to you, I went through this massive trauma which stripped me of my memories of who I was before when I'm not powered up. Wouldn't such trauma also affect me when I'm like this? It doesn't make any sense?"
There was a pent up emotion that was threatening to spill over even as she felt like her world could possibly be crumbling all around her. That emotion erupted not as anger, but as a melancholic look before she once more turned away from the General who had, up to this point, been one of the few people she believed that she could always trust.
... but now she was not so sure.
Her back was hunched over, almost as if she were protecting herself from potential harm, before she spoke again. Her voice was barely audible even as she bent down to retrieve the dropped implement she'd been using. There was no indication that she was going to use Prehnite's weapon against him and even if she tried he could have probably just summoned it back to him. Her gaze instead went to the side instead of looking at her General.
"Something once was said to me when Mizuki and I were whisked off planet. She wasn't present at the time but somehow these words haven't left me. The fact is I've been thinking so much but been keeping it pushed down. Simply put," and here Hylonome paused, "was I lied to?"
He was not one to argue with logic when flashed so blatantly in his face, especially the sort of logical conclusions Amora had come to all on her own, and the smile he'd had before slipped, twisted into something of sourness and consternation. The fingers of his right hand twitching to refit around the handle in grasp, a rare bit of fidget and physical offlet of indecision before he found himself sliding the weapon away into the one of the loose belts looped about his waistline.
It was a hard thing to answer, to look her in the eyes now and choose to keep lying? He warred with the concept, with something like 'empathy', the way it reared itself ugly for him at the worst times. But he did it, placing himself within her shoes and wondering -- cogs of wheels stirring up smoke within his own mind -- if he too would've been satisfied with just that? With some lesser answer and a brushoff. With empty promises and emptier reassurances when his doubts had been at their highest point.
"I did promise you, didn't I? That there would be nothing you couldn't come to me for....no subject that could not be broached between us..." and he almost wanted to go to her, to offer something like comfort? However poorly he would've managed the act of doing so. "Even this." A rough sigh followed the wake of words, a slight upheaval of air as he stayed put where he was, and tested out his next words cautiously.
"Can I tell you, honestly, Hylonome...no...Amora? That what I said -- when I said it -- it didn't feel like a lie. An omission, yes. But maybe that makes it even less of a kindness to have done so?" the foliage crackling underfoot as he shifted briefly, gaze flicking about the cloistered, overrun surroundings and back to her, his arms folded low over the front of his body, hands clasped.
"I just -- are you sure you want to pursue this?" A final effort, a last ditch attempt, to save himself the trouble or save her the heartache he wasn't sure. "You speak of traumas and wishing to learn of them so you can make sense of things, I assume? Only I cannot promise that learning anything at all will make it better instead of worse." He would tell her what she wanted to know, he'd already decided, but he had to ask -- to buy himself time --
More moments with her, more time to drag up that half wretched bit of glory and the way it all came raining down in fire and ash. He still wasn't sure the battle felt like a victory, only that he'd come home with a team, so unexpectedly, and he was wont to let any of them go.
Not now, not yet!
But maybe for the truth?
tefla
Posted: Mon Dec 16, 2024 3:00 am
Even as Prehnite asked if she was intent on pursuing things did Hylonome feel as if she was standing on the edge of a knife. The fact that there seemed to be anything at all to pursue caused the smallest clenching of her fists once more before she steadied herself. It would not do her any good to simply fly off the handle once more. There was a proper time and place for a deep discussion and out here in the woods, at this overgrown, ramshackle-style dwelling was certainly not the right time or place.
Slowly the corrupt allowed her gaze to lock with Prehnite's. There was a hint of pain in her expression before she gave the smallest of nods in response to the question that had been posed of her.
"I just want to know the truth. If we can finish up here then we can go back home and have a discussion, can't we? It seems only fair. I came out here to help you and I won't go off in anger because I can't wait just a little bit longer. But I do ask you to promise that you won't try to blow off this conversation once we are done here."
She wanted to look into her general's eyes as he gave his answer to her ultimatum but at the same time there was still work that needed to be finished. Her eyes flicked to the bush she'd been working on before travelling back to Prehnite's own. Her gaze was steady, but not overly aggressive as she waited to see if he'd agree to her proposition.
If only she’d been ours from the start. She’s a good agent; pragmatic, calculating, unwavering—
And even in the depths of being under fire beneath her solid gaze — being questioned— he couldn’t help the twinge of pride that surged in his soul for feeling as though he’d made the right choice in keeping her.
The wrong choice, maybe, in the line he sold to her like a baited hook in hopes that keeping would last the way seemingly nothing else ever did in life. He shouldn’t’ve been too surprised that things were coming apart now—
He just wished it wasn’t with her.
And every member of his tiny, home grown team brought something different to the table, he had no favorites, lofted neither above another. He’d never liked such competition— the way the negaverse of old had sicked them on each other — made them eat their own in some archaic ‘survival of the fittest’ methodology. Needless cruelty that produced only mindless pit vipers instead of thoughtful camaraderie. And so he hadn’t employed it within his own clusterfolfd of a troupe. Not when all he wanted was the best for them all.
Hylonome though? The things about her which he’d never expected and yet found so much sameness within. A kinship in her practicalities, her desire to apply logic to every scenario.
It was so easy to get along with the healer.
It hurt — a verbal wound that caused a microscopic flinch to flit across his features in the dim of the woods; for her small nod and the way she wanted to go back *home* to finish this discussion — and of course that’s what she’d call it because that’s what it was! Because she’s known no other and not questions that overmuch.
Because she’d trusted him—
“Always, Hylo.” A breath held, released in a sigh, it was hard to hold her gaze. To match that stare with one of promise instead of flinching ineptitude. “When we’re finished…” And he promised himself he wouldn’t drag the task out to buy himself time. That the discussion would be better had in their home, where he and she were on equal footing, where rank didn’t stand as a dividing line. A power imbalance clear as day the way it did now. They deserved to have this talk as people the same way they had back then. “I’ll take you home and we can talk. Maybe over tea, if you’d like?”
“But we will talk, regardless.”
“And I swear…whatever doubts you may have of me? You can at least believe I keep my promises. All of them. Even the ones I don’t necessarily want to.” His smile a small, pained thing. That she would still help him now even as she looked at him like that. The parts of him that wanted to cut the task short were overrun by those that — truly — desired the time — even if it lingered on in festering silence clotted up with lines of tension and the sound of foliage being cut back and overgrown webbing being consumed by the cleansing green flames of Taxones fire.
Until the task was done—
Until he could take her home in a terse blink of shifting shadows—
