I'm ridin' down your moonlight mile
Who: Troll 1/Seth (tiersdes) and Troll 2/Shiroe (zealouspeter)
When: Saturday, January 29th, 5pm, before Grandmama's Boy shows up.
Where: The streets of Sector 4
Summary: A Crusnik and a Mu pass by each other in the street, and the cat is quite literally out of the bag. Or rather, away from the NV and out of the house.
Warnings: Snarkiness and trolling, but are those ( Read more... )
When: Saturday, January 29th, 5pm, before Grandmama's Boy shows up.
Where: The streets of Sector 4
Summary: A Crusnik and a Mu pass by each other in the street, and the cat is quite literally out of the bag. Or rather, away from the NV and out of the house.
Warnings: Snarkiness and trolling, but are those ( Read more... )
It was a callous statement, but his gaze and expression didn’t change - only the minute tilting of his head, the jagged edge of something a lot more bitter than any child should have. Siren’s Port hadn’t ever been kind to him (Mother hadn’t been kind to him), and there was no getting away from how it had changed him. He might have liked to say that he was independent, above being effected by general going-ons, but-
Really, he was the same as any other living creature with a working, developing, changing conscious. This only proved it.
But he’d leave the statement as it was, tilt his head down to look at the snow-splattered ground, snub the toe of his shoe into it, watch what happened. She was an empress, a nearly thousand-year-old non-human... Soft-hearted, obviously, stubborn with a mean temper underneath. A teasing side, too, apparently. Who was the cat and who was the mouse?
At least he still had his tongue.
"You might've made attempts, but they haven't done anything yet. You're feeling out the field, huh?" A pause. "What's going to be your Peter Pan? Someone who manages to make headway legally? Is getting rid of the companies really a good idea at all?"
Devil's advocate - he was aiming to rile her up, and here, he'd make his shots at it. He knew he'd already hit a few of her lines, but the now defensive part wanted to step over them.
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...What in the world could've happened to this kid that made him so...so...vicious at times? She can sense it, though; he'd been put through something awful, something that left with him a weight that would remain with him for as long as he lived. It was not the weight of bloodshed, like half of her own burden was made up of.
It was tragedy---the bitterness was a dead giveaway; only the despondent were bitter---but what exactly was it? What had left him so cynical towards hope, towards goodwill?
...It mystified her almost as much as he generally annoyed her.
"Do you mean the natives?" She asks, after a long pause. "They may be hostile and suspicious of people like us, but...they're just as much trapped in this strange city as we are, if not even more so. Isn't that kind of attitude just as discriminatory as their own?"
That wasn't meant as an insult---it was an honest inquiry.
But, she goes on:
"For the most part, yes, we're starting out small. No use in overstepping our limits and getting ourselves caught---or killed---in the process. If anything, getting rid of the companies would ease a lot of the tensions taking place within this city---while it would cripple the economy, it's not as if a new benefactor couldn't arise in their place."
She responds clinically, calmly, much like a high-ranking military officer---she knows he's trying to get under her skin, and she's ignoring it. She saves his Peter Pan remark for last, however, and when she decides to answer that, her voice regains its playful tone as she says, "I have no need for a Peter Pan. I have only myself. If no one else wants to help me, so be it."
Another beat. "I will fight on my own---it's only what I've been doing all my life, anyhow."
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He knew she was noting everything he showed, but as far as this went, he didn't care. It was a conviction that had started and remained with him through the months, and he'd always had the awful habit of- when truly striking something serious- answering as bluntly honest as possible. This was to be no exception.
"They don't deserve people saving them. It's a waste."
And that was a conclusion made with non-budging conviction, purple eyes narrowed and smile off of his face. He wasn't insulting her, either; these were just things that he believed.
Just as he believed that this rebellion against the companies wouldn't truly get anywhere in their lifetime, and yet he'd help with it anyway-- help with it as a persona over the network, at least, what with the cardkey to that (underused) line stored away on his NV. The rebellion forces were a game, to him; some entertainment, to see how far the people believed they could get as a force of barely two dozen strong. Seth, in her own way, was part of that. She put on maybe one of the better shows to follow - an actually interesting, intricate part that was still being unraveled.
The reason he'd continue to bother her, even if she ever did prove to be a legitimate threat.
"What if they rose up just the same?" Lilting, challenging. Always. "The new companies, that is. The economy would probably be permanently ruined, too. And the government-- it's not strong enough to handle the city on its own. There would be anarchy..."
A responding pause.
"... And none of it will happen if someone doesn't die. That's how things work in this world; I've read up on it."
If she was going to be clinical, so was he. But he couldn't match her playful tone exactly - it was striking him, too, just how similar the two of them were (especially if he wanted to bring in Jomy's stories of the Mu), and it wasn't... pleasing. Wasn't distressful, either, just not something he could gloat about-- and this continued Peter Pan talk-
"What made you think about that story?" A blurted questions, all-too-telling, but he didn't have time to scold himself for it. Only enough time to ask and wait and think for the steps ahead, on her and him and everything else.
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...Like the Terrans in the Empire.
His comment about anarchy hits close to home----after all, as Empress, she was the only thing holding things together back home. If she died...
...No. She wasn't about to dwell upon it. "Perhaps. But anarchy will always be quelled; that's also the nature of how things are run---no matter where you go. It's a cycle, really, when you think about it. Things come down, new things go up, and so on and so forth. It's just a matter of weeding out the bad apples and bolstering the good ones." She says nonchalantly. "That's society. That's life."
After that bit of wisdom, there's pause before she answers his---blurted---question, and suddenly, she looks up at the cloudy sky.
"...You know what? I'm not sure." She says, laughing a bit sheepishly. "Nostalgia, I guess. Lilith used to read that story to me, as a child."
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"It's too rigid." This was a conspiratorial topic said in a normal-conversation voice, as if they had suddenly touched on the weather. His face lightened up, shoulders moving back, relaxing. "There's never any change. And when there is, the only time it leaves a real impact is when it's negative. You can't deny that-- it's what people focus on more than anything else."
The media was proof enough of that- the S.D. government was proof enough of that. A result far worse, as far as he still believed (though he occasionally wondered, in moments where he wasn't entirely himself, whether the S.D. government really was in the wrong, considering what he'd seen here), than anything else. She wouldn't believe that, probably-- she'd rather have any government than no government at all, even if she might say differently. People always said differently: that was a fact of life, too.
But then, she was a dictator, wasn't she? A soft one, tempered by sub-rulers, but still a dictator.
"What good is a tribute when the strong could get it themselves? That would make them lazy as well, if they're always served." And a pause, as that last topic came back around. Lilith... He remembered her name being mentioned, vaguely, but there hadn't been exacts, had there? The Methuslah's - Seth's - mixed and mashed really-too-long past, of betrayal and hope and whatever other poetic term could be added--
He much preferred Neverland.
But if she didn't belong in it, then he wouldn't count her as part of it (but then, his standards were a bit unfairly high). So, "What other stories?"
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There needed to be order. Without it, you would end up with cataclysmic events like Armageddon. Or the war against and near-genocide of the Mu by the S.D. government. Either way, not only society would suffer---the environment would, too. Whether it was Earth---Terra---or the vast reaches of space. Destruction and chaos waited for no man. No non-human, either.
"Lazy? Perhaps. But it keeps things balanced. If the strong dominated over everything, things would also devolve in no time. Egos would clash. That's why we need the weak around, to basically keep everyone sane." Seth laughs bitterly, thinking of the Empire. "There are no easy answers, Shiroe. Society, over the years, has become a quagmire of ambiguity, ambivalence, and ulterior motives. It'll take someone prodigal to sift through all that and tidy it up."
She sounded a bit more cynical than she'd really meant to when she said all that, but---it was true. She wasn't that prodigal "someone." She'd already done all she could. All she could do was to preserve what she'd already built. To protect it.
Nothing more, nothing less.
And she's glad he didn't pry for any more details about Lilith. She wasn't someone she wanted to talk about right now, especially with all this talk about society and government and the rest of the hootenanny that came with it.
But, to reminisce over her childhood---that was more comfortable territory. And her expression shows it. She smiles again. "The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, A Thousand and One Nights, The Lost World...many, many stories. It's odd, though. Looking back upon it, the stories she chose were almost prophetic."
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