wakey wakey [ @all ]

[kenosnpcs]

This is a post where you'll find a header in the comments for Aetós, Agapitos Voreen, and Florence Deshayes respectively.

As a reminder from our course correction, your OOC understanding of their places in their factions should not influence IC reactions, especially to Agapitos and Florence. Aggressive threats and demands are likely to be ignored, because this would be very out of the blue to them! ( You can be mean to Aetós, though. They're a dick, and they just won't respond. )

Timewise, Agapitos and Florence's posts are shortly after Shard-Bearers awake after the repose (roughly a day to give people a chance to get their bearings/go get a haircut/etc), and Aetós's portion is later in the month.


Please note, new tag-ins will not be responded to after April 23rd. However, tagging each other throughout this post is welcome. Threadjack to your heart's content!

Comments

[kenosnpcs]

That they have to forge their own path. Make their own choices. From their first days here, as bearers, they were required to choose.

[ It is simple, and firm. ]

If I had my choice, I would not work with any who were previously aligned with Zenith. I would not allow them into the city at all. I would rend them with a blade if I could. I would excise them from Meridian's light and leave them to rot.

[ Sharp, like a hot blade. ]

But I do not have that choice. I am a leader, and I must make decisions independent of what will make one or two individuals happy. I must make decisions that guarantee the safety of my people and my city, and Meridian's victory. In the same sense, if such individuals choose something else, if they choose to forge a path, as long as it faces Meridian's light, then why should I stop them?

You do not have to like me, or my choices, to fight. Just know who it was that forced my hand. It was not the monsters you speak of, but Zenith. They flooded our streets with drugged enemies and slaughtered my people — family and friends alike — in the streets, and then they murdered Cyrus. Our Tribune.

[ That being said, after something that feels like the white-hot anger of the sun, it abates to something warmer, like it is waning. ]

If you find that monsters are what you wish to focus on, I will not stop you. I only stop those that hold us back from victory.

[warmare]

[She likes the sharp part. Being sharp was easy. She had spent her entire life forging herself sharp. … But even she knew that it was only because she was a warrior, the sort that can could only be sharp… and had little need to be anything else, beyond discerning enough to make sure that the person who held the “blade” would swing it at the right enemy.

She understands the pressure of leadership. She does not despise the concept that one must sometimes sublimate personal desire for majority.]

I am good at hunting monsters, Tribune.

[Those her stable master had designated as such, her enemies, the bumps in the night that had haunted Alenroux, Manon, scum from Kowloon, Zenites.

She would never let those hunts prevent her from focusing on an Oracle when it was in play (or so she likes to think), and yet it is still true what she was bred and raised for. But.]

Cyrus asked me to be more. General Zaman asked me to do more.

[And the loss of those she knew and trusted in Meridian is disorienting. Like everything else about waking up a century after she had closed her eyes.]

Do you?

[… and if he did, how and when and why are the questions lurking.]

[kenosnpcs]

I ask every Shard Bearrer of Meridian to be the best version of themselves and fight for Meridian.

For those that have allowed it to fill your hearts so fully, do I need to even ask? You have agreed to it already. We have a war to fight, and Meridian needs every stalwart warrior we have focused on the threat that lingers in the shadows.

[warmare]

[The response makes Hayame bristle, inclined as ever to seeing slights in the words of others.]

My heart is full.

I am just as devoted to winning the Oracles for Meridian as I was before I went to sleep and somehow stayed that way for a hundred godsdamned years.

But I am asking about the other things I agreed to, under the auspices of a man who is dead and a general who now lives comfortably in an apparently well-deserved retirement. More than half of the people I would have relied on to help accomplish that task quickly and as peacefully as possible, the Legionnaires I trained, the citizens whose respect I earned... they are dead or decrepit now.

[All the people that she trusted, when her trust is something that takes months and deeds to earn--]

So you must forgive the impertinence of wanting to know what this Tribune expects of me, and what even needs to be done now.

If you would prefer we discuss it face to face, I will pretend I grew wings and meet you in the sky.

[kenosnpcs]

Your mission has not changed, of course. We ask you the same as you were asked before. Our resources have not been rescinded, and will always be here to pursue the needs of Meridian.

Time has not changed our needs, or what we need from you, after all. You are needed, your mission is needed.

[warmare]

[How? She wants to rage. How could it not have changed, when to her, everything else has? Unfamiliar faces, Springstar in the godsdamned air and not even Springstar anymore, the freak she has fought to hunt and uproot since she discovered what had made that man Manon into a beast was now out in the open and apparently this Tribune had rationalized it somehow, and- ?

The glow of that sun in the ceiling that had taken up her entire gaze had been so warm. The same flows in this man, she can sense it in their communion. Something in her thinks she should just stop fighting, just accept it, but she can’t.

It does help her hold her tongue. A long time. Before, almost quietly,]

… I was honored to have been entrusted with that. I was ready to strike, and to deliver Springstar what I was asked.

[Is there meaning in the past tense, to “Springstar”, to the confusion-laced bitterness and disappointment to be heard in her tone? She had been the monster once, and she had willingly served beside them, too, but she was supposed to be…

She was supposed to be better now, she wanted to be-]

But what honor is there in serving if I serve alongside monsters?

[Not even just Aetos. The cavalier “well they wouldn’t be the only maddened among us”, as if that was just fine, as if that should be accepted—]

I fought to free Alenroux from Aetos’ experiments and murderous beasts, and now you would have me deliver it into the hands that join with his? Will you give it back to him for a playground? Why, why do you allow that mad mage reign in the sky with you?

[kenosnpcs]

[ There is the sensation of a white hot, sun-burning stare. ]

As I explained. I am not above using the tools that achieve the best results. Because I can control someone like that, and ensure that they do their work for Meridian, instead of against it. He is not an ally, he is a tool. [ As he told Dimitri, he has something very important to Aetos. ] They cannot act against us when I could shatter a part of them at any time.

I would no sooner throw him out than a recent convert to Meridian, even if they were previously Zenith. Even if they actively sought our doom. Because, unfortunately, I am a leader, and that means I must accept and swallow the things that I do not want to for the greater good.

One thing that you learn in business is that there is no such thing as waste. If you throw something aside, or choose to leave an opportunity because they slighted me, or even harmed my business in the past, it will be used by a competitor or an enemy. I refuse to take that personally, when I have our bright futures under Meridian's light to strive for in the future.

[warmare]

[Hayame stares back, proverbial hairs on the back of her neck bristling. Even if one of her eyes is a black hole of Not Her, of someone else's vision in her fucking skull... She has enough pain and rage to fill the half that's still her. In fairness, it isn't all to do with this man. It's Aetos, it's her own "allies", it's a demon, it's knowing what will surely happen once she takes a stand, it's a hundred godsdamned years--

It's how she had the opportunity to serve with honor, with people she had come to trust, and then Zenith took it all away and now she has whatever this is, some different city and different people and dead neighbors and leaders who think she should just...

Swallow it.]

So they are not kidnapping people off the streets anymore? They are not porting in monsters from other worlds or splicing shards together on their table any longer?

[It was one thing to say he had something on Aetos to get him to work for Meridian, but it is another thing altogether to say that he was no longer conducting his sick little experiments.

And as for waste-

Why worry about something you have cast aside being used by the enemy when you can just shatter them?]

[kenosnpcs]

Hayame.

[ She will feel it. The blossom of Meridian in her. Fervency. Agapitos Voreen is a conduit for Meridian, in the same way Cyrus was, but he is not gentle.

She will feel Meridian in her hearts, in her mind. It is encomapssing. She is T4, and thus, the flood of Meridian is heavy, and righteous. Devotion toward Meridian is everything. ]

They are under our thumb. They are doing what must be done for us. Using the resources of this world to bring our worlds back is paramount.

We have to use the resources here. Kenos is in a delicate balance, why would we not use everything we can to tip it in our favor?

[warmare]

[Bitterness is easy for Hayame. Distrust is easy, hatred is easy. They always have been, and those had been the things that fueled her, once. They still do, even though she liked to think she had grown and found other things in her life. But now Meridian is there, warm until it was hot, gentle until it was burning things out.

Like the growing suspicions she had about this new Tribune she had never known and what it meant that she had woken into a world where the faction she had served had Changed.

Hayame is silent for a long time. She feels...]

... For us.

[... Is it a question? She feels like she meant it to be a question, but she doesn't actually know.]

What is he doing for us... ?

[She is on the cusp. If she could... if there was something to put there, an answer to the question that would smooth the burning veins between hearts and mind... it feels like everything would just make sense.]