[IC] TotMV:G2: The Ballroom (Travel Phase)

[StormLord]

Friedhold watches the pale woman stare at the child and after several moments he looks down at her to see if something was wrong.  After see that it was nothing he looks back at the pale woman and says: "She's not what you think, not anymore at least.  Even if she was, she's better off here than where we came from.  A dark, twisted place to which I never wish to return."

[Chevaleresse]

"I see. . ." He figured he wouldn't press the issue with the man, though he felt much the same way as Ghost seemed to. "Anyway, you don't have elves where you're from? Pointy ears, fair skinned, live forever unless someone does something about it? I hadn't even thought of that. . ." The quarter-dragon thought for a moment. "So, what, is it like one of those books where humans are the only intelligent species left, then? Or did they never exist at all?"

[Sutoratosu]

"The only beings in my world who live forever are the old gods themselves, the Deva" Ghost answered "and even they are nothing compared to what they once were. When they became unfit to continue holding dominion over our world, tore it apart with their battle for supremacy, men are the ones who wrested it away from them... well, a man. I've never heard nor encountered any sister race to my kind, at least not any that weren't created through some sort of curse as punishment for any number of heinous crimes during the time of The King... criminals and exiles of the highest order, basically.

      By now though, most of them exist on as mere legend and myth, wiped out over the years for one reason or another. If there was ever another race on my world that was inherently separate from my own, yet walked and talked as we do, my kind would've seen them long, long ago... even if for no other reason than we'd have probably fought them over what little can be salvaged of my world. Just like how we eventually fought and killed off The Cursed."

[Chevaleresse]

"I see." Ghost's world sounded. . . unpleasant, at best. Certainly, Sararhiod had its problems - hell, it was his job at times to deal with the worst it had to offer - but she hadn't described anything sounding pleasant at all. "In my world, there are a number of sentient races. Humans, elves, dwarves, orcs, and dragons, to name a few; listing every single one might actually be impossible." Did everyone here come from desolate, broken worlds? That seemed to be a recurring theme with the descriptions his new companions had to offer. 

[Sutoratosu]

"And... I suppose you all live among each other in relative peace then, from what you mentioned about your master?" It may have been a bit rude, but Ghost was unable but to help letting some of her skepticism show in her eyes. "without everyone trying to slit the other's throats for one reason or another, or raid other people for whatever they've earned through their own hard work? Do your people just... really let each other be, for the most part? No one trying to subjugate another culture, or wipe those who resist off the face of the world? If so, it must be wonderful... I can hardly imagine what such a place would look like..."

 

Her eyes turned to Tama, as she spoke the last part. It was... difficult to tell for certain, but the expression she wore was... accusatory

 

"Don't look at me. I may have set into the motion what the world became, but I didn't make humans so desperate and bloodthirsty. You lot were already like that back when you were all mere servants to us. If anything, we simply kept it in check until those traits suited our goals most."

 

At his response, Ghost sighed in disgust, turning back to Masaru

 

"...Where did you used to live, in your home world? A city, some small town in the middle of nowhere? All alone?"

[Chevaleresse]

"More or less. Depends on where you go, really, and which races you mean. The last time anything like that happened was probably a thousand years ago, with the Empire conquering half of Sararhiod before it stalled and broke apart." Ghost was probably one of the more pessimistic people he'd met. Did she really believe two species would just automatically try to subjugate one another? He supposed she probably didn't realize she was talking to a hybrid. . . "I used to live in a village. Not huge, but not tiny either. That was before I took up adventuring; nowadays I don't really live anywhere in particular." 

 

 

[Sutoratosu]

"...An empire... now there's something I know all too well. The one ruling my world is all too alive and well though..." She took a seat on a nearby peice of rubble- oddly familiar to her...infact, this was probably the same one she'd spoken to Vora on earlier. How ironic... "I can't recall a lick of where I'm from, honestly. Was born just another slave I guess, probably sold off by my master as soon as they realized what I was and how much the State was willing to pay for a child with The Voice. That's the only way I can think as to how I ended up in the Imperial Training Complex, at least; the others who were with me probably all had the same story. They raised us to be soldiers, special agents, bodyguards, whatever the empire needed most, we were molded into." 

     She leaned back against the cold and jagged stone, her face darkening as she recalled the details of all those years. The recline wasn't in the least bit comfortable, but compared to how many nights she'd spent on either the barren ground among the dust and dirt, or a cold stone floor, Ghost found she really didn't care. "I lost a lot of friends, during those years. The instructors always said it was because they were too weak, too soft, weren't worth the space to begin with. Said that it was good to thin the herd, gave em more opportunity to focus on those who had actual potential. There was... what, 500, a thousand of us? back when we were youngsters... not very much older than her actually" She nodded to the child who hid behind Friendhold

    "By the time we were... 16 or so? and ready to graduate, there were barely 50 of us left. Or maybe more like 40. It's hard to remember, but a few... tried to dismantle their collars and escape in the middle of the night, not too long before then. Guess they just got tired of living like dogs, decided they were going to get away and take the reigns of fate into their own hands. Blew their pretty little heads off, in the blink of an eye. Bastards had always told us that if we set a single foot outside the approved perimeter, we'd be just another mess on the ground. Never said anything against poking around the collars though. Guess they figured it would be more interesting to see which ones really had the strongest wills in the end, still resisted and tried to defy them even when we were so close to the very end.

     Sometimes, I wish I had been one of them, that night. That I had defied them one last time and tried to pry it off. The world might've been just a little bit better off in the long run, if I'd never lent myself to the State...died before I ever got a chance to serve the emperor."

[Chevaleresse]

"I see." Masaru's expression faded to a scowl as Ghost spun her story. "Well, I'll tell you this: if there comes a day down the line when you want to, you can call me and the Four Heavenly Kings, and we'll help you topple those slaving bastards." The quarter-dragon looked and sounded deadly serious; slavery was a grievous insult to him and his beliefs. "We're not normally in the business of messing with the rule of a place, but for a crime like this, I'm pretty sure I can convince them to make an exception."

[Sutoratosu]

"I appreciate the offer." The tone in her voice sounded like it was glad, as she sat there. She wanted to be glad. But her face gave it all away that she'd done this type of song and dance before... and that she knew how it generally tends to end too. 

      "I almost had the bastards, once, you know. So close to just... cutting off the snake's head, making sure it can't come back like some Naga. A General here, a governor there, a senator lounging in his summer home... one by one, we hunted them like cattle, uprooted and burned any trace of the imperial line of succession, working our way deeper and deeper into the interior... until finally all that was left was him. All emperors horses and all his men dead, but when we finally got there, someone else had taken his head... someone who... turned right around, and filled that empty throne. And just like that, I lost... everyone fighting beside me, everyone who trusted me... lost. All I'd done was made it easy for someone far more vicious and ambitious than him to take his place."

      She sighed, voice tired as she droned on. Their faces flashed through her mind, one by one, men she'd been tasked to protect, men she'd later turned right around and killed. To a Sumurian, politics were about more than mere policy or the current state of affairs. No, it was a deadly, unforgiving game. When you played it, you were either willing to kill, or be killed. Such was the unspoken tradition the land had adopted. Such was the unspoken tradition she'd once helped to propagate.

     "He wouldn't listen to anything I had to say then," she continued "The one who... beat me to him. and I doubt he would if we met again. Hmph, probably already gotten around to replacing all those dead officials- we'd have to do everything... all... over... again... New faces, new names, new schedules and habits to memorize, no doubt his creations to contend with too, this time around. And God knows what he's capable of himself, these days.For a while I hoped that maybe he was going to prove me wrong. That he'll be...different from the man who came before him. I don't really see any reason why he would though, at this point. Guess it's just... a mother's foolish wish.."

 

She sat up abruptly, arms resting on her knees as she stared at the floor "But look at me, sitting here and shitting on someone's offer when they're just trying to help me. I'm sorry. I do appreciate what you're offering, really. Maybe... maybe someday. I... I need some time, I guess. If I can just get my bearings about what's changed since we got called away, figure out how to even go about an operation like that a second time...and hopefully get a better ending than the first...maybe.

 

Either way, Thank you."

[Chevaleresse]

Masaru nods. "Sounds like it'd be best if you just burned the entire damn system down. No more emperor, no more empire. Break the entire thing to pieces, and let the pieces decide what they want to do with themselves. Of course, I'm not so stupid as to believe you could do it as easy as saying it. There would be sacrifices to make, and a lot of people would die. A lot of good people, in all likelihood." He placed his sword on the ground, standing up on the end, one hand balancing it. "I guess it's a question of what you value. I know, for one, that I'd rather die fighting for my freedom and the freedom of the others around me than live on, simply letting a man who views people as tools continue about his business."

[Sutoratosu]

"I can't say much in that regard. For the longest time, I did the latter." Ghost muttered "I'm not entirely sure why I fight, anymore. Anger, Hate maybe? Guilt? Regret? They all seemed to lose any meaning, after a while. Just become the empty emotions of an empty person. Leave a candle lit long enough, and I guess eventually it goes cold. That's probably around I stopped using my name altogether.

    Or the fake one they gave me, at least. God knows what my real one was, if I ever had one. Alba Vincula... 'White Chain'. It was a fitting name... for a different woman. A woman I was tired of being. For a while I thought I wanted peace. Then I realized, trying to bring peace of any kind was pointless, because peace directly interferes with the will of tyrants, and is the utter antithesis of raiders and predators. So long as they exist, they'll do everything they can to tear down any peace that takes root and blossoms. Me and Tama might've been strong.... maybe even the strongest, at that time, but even we couldn't kill all the wolves. There'd always be more waiting to take their place.

      So I guess from there, I figured: if I can't stop men from acting like wolves, I can at least teach the sheep how to defend themselves. protect the lives they had built and earned with their own hands, instead of tearing it away from others. That just pissed the empire off to no end really- but it worked. Small as most... places I visited were, many of em can't realistically expect to win an all out battle with the empire if they sent their full might against them. Luckily though, the Imps don't like to leave many areas ungarrisoned whenever they make a move- learned from past rebellions and losing a few cities. Arrogant too, and not particular on sustaining steady losses to resources. It worked out in my favor, most of the time- if or when the Legion came for them, they were able to hold out long enough for the folks in the capital to just give up and cut their losses. Hell, sometimes they even managed to slaughter the invaders all together, heheheh... wiped the greedy bastards off the face of the earth.  

     She continued the chuckle, for a minute or two. She didn't find it particularly funny, the fact that peace was more or less a fool's dream and that it was simply the way of things that one way or another, many men must die if others are to remain free to simply live. But damn, if it wasn't satisfying when she thought about it- the looks that must've been on the imperial's faces when news of each failed campaign or each loss made it home, the utter frustration they must've experienced when they heard whatever the locals of that area had called her....

      "Hmph...maybe that's what I'm really after, in the end. Making everyone of those monsters running that show suffer just as much as they've made the rest of the world. Send them the message that their days are numbered... Yeah, I like that, actually. It's good that those types of men are made to feel some fear. Made to bleed an ocean for every drop of blood they've soaked the earth with. Karma is an absolute bitch. I guess I'm just helping her speed up a bit."

[Chevaleresse]

"I can support that. My home is relatively peaceful; they'll get on just fine without me and mine. That offer stands until you choose to accept it. And, well, if I can convince the Kings to come along - but they're up for making a real change as much as I am. Except maybe that damn paladin; not sure if the pointy-eared bastard is interested in anything but the next woman he can convince to try out his 'magic hands'. . ." The quarter-dragon shakes his head. 

[Sutoratosu]

"...Magic.... hands? Oh....oooh..." she laughed, finally understanding the gripe "I see...how unfortunate."

     with that said, she turned to frienhold "What about you though? You've been silent for quite some time, where did you too come from? You mentioned something about darkness earlier, didn't you?" Her attention soon shifted to the girl though, and stayed there for a time "Does she have a name? Your... daughter, I presume?"

 

of course, that was still presuming much at this point. Despite his attempts at reassuring them she wasn't whatever they thought she was earlier, Ghost was still uncertain as to the true nature of the girl. No one else here had seemed to drag children along with them, at the very least...

[Code: PIRULUK]

Single-minded in her purpose, Kagari ignored the rest of their allies in the Ballroom, dragging Hikari by the hand. She had a mission to teach this young lady the fine art of Keijo, and while they had been interrupted previously by the angel's request, this was a prime opportunity to resume their training. She turned to Hikari.

 

"Well then, we can begin with warmups. 100 counts of hip-8s. I'll do them with you. Let's go!"

 

Without waiting for a response, Kagari launched into a series of absurdly quick hip-figure-eights. She wasn't expecting a human to keep up with her, of course. This was her own warmup. 1600 counts of Hip-8s. At her regular speed, she should be able to finish at roughly the same time as her aspiring protege.

[Twinwolf]

Hikari was certainly being dragged by the slime queen, and blushing furiously as she did. "H-Hey, why are we doing this here!? I-Isn't there somewhere more private to practice?" she asked. She'd not even had time to de-summon her armor and weaponry before Kagari started to drag her in. 

 

...She seems to not particularly care who sees her doing something like this.

It's just like that time Ella tricked me to do that one advertisement...

At least Kagari allows you to do this clothed.

[Code: PIRULUK]

"Private? Why?"

 

Kagari raised an eyebrow as she continued to move her hips in a rhythmic, steady fashion.

 

"If you're going to be a real Keijo player, you're going to need to learn to deal with stares. We deal with it on a daily basis. It's a lot of pressure, not everyone can handle it. But it's the bare minimum if you want to be a pro. This is good practice."

 

Concluding her reasoning, Kagari started to accelerate the pace of her warmups, if only to pressure Hikari a bit into joining in.

[Twinwolf]

"That makes sense... I guess..."

Do it for the ability, Hikari. Such speed is highly useful.

Easy for you to say.

 

Hikari bites her lip. Treat it like a show. It's just like one of those swimsuit commercials the agency keeps having you do. Just treat it like part of your career. Hikari takes a deep breath, and stands up a bit straighter. Some of these people would have seen how effective Kagari is - they couldn't blame her for wanting to be stronger. "Fine then..." she says, and starts up mirroring Kagari. She's still blushing, but not as heavily, focusing on the end result of the training. She's not nearly as good at this as Kagari, but then she's human - albeit she's possibly doing better than the slime queen expected, considering her pre-existing athleticism.

[StormLord]

Friedhold stood for a moment finishing chewing he bite of stir-fry, he then gestured for the girl to step forward from hiding behind him. "Say hello." He said to her in a soft tone.  She began to timidly step forward and with a gentle push she stood in front of the three adults.  "H-hello" Though she spoke softly and failed to make eye contact her voice seemed to echo in on itself.  "Now tell them your name." "My name?" "What did the other girls call you?" "Oh, Alice." "Thank you." As she finished she turned and looked up at him and said "I want to go find angels now.  Can we go find angels?" "You can go look for angels, just don't leave this room." As soon as he said this she skipped off with pure excitement.  

 

"You asked where I'm from and what I've done." He said while finding himself a seat on one of the piles of rubble "Well, mine is another tale of suffering, though I won't try and say I have suffered as much as you." He looked at Ghost as he said this. "As a child I my family was poor and lived a simple life, then as a young man the second World War came, and I played the role of the man in chains.  Beaten and treated like the lowest of animals, in a place where you pray each day the death will find you swiftly and mercifully, and yet you find each day your prayers go unanswered.  In the short time I was at that place I saw hundreds die, starvation, sickness, torture, or simply target practice.  Eventually I managed to escape those tormentors...my family did not. Unsettled by this point he shifted on the pile and found somewhere to set him half eaten meal.  "After the war I could barely keep my stomach full and my many attempts at higher learning were usually met with a lack of money or being told my pursuits were impractical.  It was at this point someone contacted me, a woman named Dr Brigid Tenenbaum.  She offered my a job in a place known as Rapture, described as a city under the sea, a utopia hidden away from all other civilization." He sighed and shook his head. "Rapture was great, amazing, wonderful, and at the time I knew nothing of the greatness I would help create, or the terror I would help release.  My job in Rapture was to help develop and test solutions known as Plasmids that were created from a chemical called Adam." He flicked some electricity between his fingers as he spoke of Plasmids. "You see, everyone in Rapture wanted Plasmids, and they took large amounts of Adam to produce, and the slugs that produced Adam took decades to mature.  We were running out of Adam, so one of our sister labs started work trying to find a way to make the slugs grow faster and produce more Adam." He paused a moment, having reached a point where he was visibly uncomfortable.  "Something you must understand is that Rapture was meant to by a place where the weak would have no power to restrain the great, this also means that many of the experiments performed were done so in disregard of regular society's morals.  So this sister lab found that implanting the slug in the stomach lining of a host provided it with both constant protection and a nutrients rich environment to grow in.  Further more, modifying the subject's biology slightly with Adam allowed them to harvest thirty times the Adam from a single slug in less than a tenth the time span." He stopped all of a sudden as if not wanting to continue, before pressing on. "The problem was that they found the only viable hosts to be young girls.  They called them 'Little Sisters', and mentally conditioned them to both follow protectors called 'Big Daddies' and collect Adam from the many corpses laying around Rapture at the time." He paused, letting the fact sink in. "Several years after I came to Rapture and started working with Adam we noticed people starting to suffer from the side effects of Adam, or more specifically not continuing to take regular Adam doses after starting.  Because Adam modifies the genetic structure stopping taking it starts a genetic degradation that leads to a slow painful decent into madness and suffering.  It was also around this time we had something known as the Rapture civil war.  A man named Atlas and his army of goons and druggies destroyed half the city in an attempt to steal all the Adam for themselves.  They succeeded more or less as well.  They held me and several other scientists up in our labs forcing us to make more Plasmids for them.  At one point several of Atlas' goons came to me with the girl." He gestured to her, she was now trying to climb up the wall to get to what looks like a vent near the ceiling of the room. "How they got her away from her protector without killing themselves I don't know, and instead of asking I shot the lot of them, reversed what I could of the girl's mental conditioning, and tried to find a way out.  The next thing I remember is another of Atlas' goons walking in, a stray bullet shattering a window, the rush of water filling the room, and then washing up of the shore of Rio de Janeiro." With that he finished and leaned back on the pile of rubble before noticing Alice climbing up the wall on the other side of the room and yelling at her to get down.

[Chevaleresse]

Masaru stayed quiet as the man told his story. He started to ask a question, though his gaze was drawn to the side halfway through. "So, what does she mean when she asks about looking for angels? That's one of those Southerner things, right? Divine messengers or something. . . ?" It wasn't exactly difficult to figure out what was drawing his attention; Masaru seemed to be rather interested in the practice going on across the room. 

[Sutoratosu]

"Why the hell are they waving their asses like that?" Ghost muttered under her breath, "What is this, some Brothel?" before long though, she returned her... attention to Fiendholds story, even if her gaze remained where it was. When it was finally over and the swordfighter made his inquiry, she followed up with one of her own. This time she was watching the girl.

     "So... these little girls, like her... Alice... your people would infect them with... parasites and then start.. harvesting this... adam substance from them?" She didn't try to hide her disgust at the idea, not in the least bit. Not even Sumur was so... depraved as that. That wasn't to say that the Imperial Scholars didn't carry out numerous experiments on children, they most certainly did; orphans and young slaves sold off to the state by masters who had no desire of them for one reason or another made a perfect supply of plentiful test subjects who could not resist like an adult would. But even they... seldom went so far as to infect their subjects with creatures, simply to harvest some macguffin material. No, no, in such a case, they would have taken a far more direct route, tinkered with the creature's bodies and cells until they found a way to forcefully increase its biological output to whatever they desired, without the need to waste perfectly good children as carriers or hosts...either that or they just would've stuck to using expendable livestock.

 

"And just what does this Adam do in the first place? If it's some type of... drug like you're suggesting, why do so many stop taking it after... starting? That doesn't sound indicative of common addict behaviour..."

[StormLord]

Friedhold sat there in thought for a few seconds before replying to Ghost, "Judging by the way you've talked about them, neither of you seem to come from worlds of advanced science so I will explain.  I assume you know how people are born with different traits, some from your mother, and some from your father, these make up your genetics or genes.  Adam allows us to remove, modify, or even add entirely new traits." He paused and scratched his chin for a moment. "The reason people stopped taking Adam was not disdain or desire, but the fact that there simply wasn't enough Adam to go around.  People slowly became crazed bloodthirsty monsters, willing to do anything, sell anything, or kill anything-" He gestured to the girl again, "for the next hit.  It got so bad that simply growing Adam slugs in children wasn't enough, they decided they needed to teach the girls(who could already see Adam flowing through peoples veins) to harvest Adam from the dead, and so the paired them with protectors and sent them out.  I can say I had nothing directly to do with their creation, but I also had nothing to do with trying to stop them."

 

He turned to Masaru "The angels she speaks of are not what you're thinking.  Though they seem to be inspired by religion they're simply another manifestation of the brainwashing.  What she means is the she wants to find dead to harvest, just like she's been taught to do." He paused in thought for a while.  "Something I find odd is that after washing up in Rio she seems to be able to extract Adam from those who've never come into contact with the substance.  And after our fight with the Trespassers she's kept mumbling on about demons, and how we have to kill them before they kill the angels.  Honestly, sometimes it's difficult to tell the difference between when the child is talking, and when the parasite is talking."

[Sutoratosu]

"Wait that thing can control her?!" Ghost only realized her volume after her outrage was already expressed and she was on her feet. Sheepishly, she recalled where she was and sat back down on the ruined peice of facade. Tama only sighed beneath his breath- though he perfectly understood her... mix of emotions. He'd been there for the whole thing, after all... all those years... Maternal Instincts were always the hardest ones to suppress

     "I... apologize for that outburst..." she continued, grinding her teeth. She had to consciously remind herself that technically speaking, this man here wasn't the one who had made the.... modifications she had come to so... loathe over the course of this conversation. There was no point directing her disgust at him... "I... think I understand what you mean, anyway. Your people were merely using this Adam to accomplish what some in my own world would seek through more mystical paths then...Albeit on a larger scale... and seemingly with a bit more success. How bad does it get for her though? The Parasite? It can't control her actual actions outright, can it?"

[ElfCollaborator]

16 hours ago, Twinwolf said:

"That makes sense... I guess..."

Do it for the ability, Hikari. Such speed is highly useful.

Easy for you to say.

 

Hikari bites her lip. Treat it like a show. It's just like one of those swimsuit commercials the agency keeps having you do. Just treat it like part of your career. Hikari takes a deep breath, and stands up a bit straighter. Some of these people would have seen how effective Kagari is - they couldn't blame her for wanting to be stronger. "Fine then..." she says, and starts up mirroring Kagari. She's still blushing, but not as heavily, focusing on the end result of the training. She's not nearly as good at this as Kagari, but then she's human - albeit she's possibly doing better than the slime queen expected, considering her pre-existing athleticism.

Yes, avoid the stares, Hikari. Avoid them.

 

Ignore the rather entranced Sachi watching you do your Keijo warmups. That's right. 

 

The expression on Sachi's face is mixed between entrancement and utter confusion. Mainly the latter.

Edited June 5, 2017 by ElfCollaborator

[StormLord]

Friedhold recoiled slightly at the outburst but then relaxed and straitened up.  "As far as I know it can't, aside from the occasional outburst of speech.  I don't fully understand it, but I believe the parasites also seem to grant them a...well...are you familiar with the expression 'rose tinted glasses'?  It means to only see the good in life, they don't seem to be able to see or perhaps understand any of the horror around them." Friedhold shifts in his seat again, he reaches over a picks back up his food. "If I were to ever return to that place, I wouldn't leave until the city lay as a silent ruin at the bottom of the ocean."

[Code: PIRULUK]

13 minutes ago, ElfCollaborator said:

Yes, avoid the stares, Hikari. Avoid them.

 

Ignore the rather entranced Sachi watching you do your warmups in your swimsuit. That's right. 

 

The expression on Sachi's face is mixed between entrancement and utter confusion. Mainly the latter.

 

As Sachi continued to be entranced by Kagari and Hikari's butt-waving display, unbeknownst to her, a small part of Kagari's constituent slime fell off, hitting the floor and crawling along it, largely unnoticed. It snuck behind Sachi and, in a single, great movement, formed itself into a lithe arm and started groping Sachi's butt.