driftfleet | (no subject)

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(no subject)

Who: Everyone messed up by the dragon plot, and visitors
Broadcast: N/A
Action: Blue Fish's clinic!
When: All throughout the Solrius dragon plot and through the space flight to the next destination.

[So several RPG characters, a dragon, and two messianic figures walk into a planet.

Everything is suffering and tears, there's a lot of dead people, there's no punchline. But, hey, for the survivors, the Blue Fish's clinic is treating wounds and generally being a decent place to rest and recover and pray you don't see a dragon again. And for those who weren't involved, there's enough people bedridden here that there may just be someone you want to visit.]

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[Oh, that's interesting. Humans don't use magic on his world. They can't, not without it twisting their bodies and eventually turning them into misshapen wraiths. He drops what he's doing and observes her use of the wind, curious. It doesn't feel unnatural or tainted like he'd expect. There's a sense that she is not a nature spirit, but the resistance is minimal; she isn't abusing the wind, so Dezel has no immediate problem with it.

He makes a subtle gesture with his fingers after a minute. There's a new wind in town, and it's bringing her a napkin.]

[She stops for a moment to stare at it, then reaches out with her own wind to take it.

(She would really like to use her arms, but those are pretty messed up right now, and if she moves them, she thinks Beverly might just kill her herself.)

Still, she's going to lower the napkin to her bedside, and gently lower her food onto it, before taking stock of the room. Allen can't do that, Sorey probably(?) can't do that, Eithan uses fire not wind, it could be Zaveid except he's not flexing or trying to show off his abs while he does it (she just met him, but she's pretty sure he's that kind of person, like Silver with better hair). So that leaves... the other guy with green-tinged hair. Huh. She's going to have to ask one of the Seraphim around here if that's a natural thing, or if the colored highlights are just Seraph fashion.]

Was that you?

[To be fair, Zaveid definitely used his wind while flexing and showing off his abs once, so she's entirely right about that.

He lifts his head as he's addressed, though he doesn't make eye contact. He seems closer to a shaggy dog than a person with eyes. Where is his hat? Who knows. It'd only make this worse.]

Yeah.

[He tilts his head a little.]

You can see me?

I can. If it weren't for the hair, I wouldn't have even realized you're a seraph.

[She's becoming used to them, somehow. But her mana sight passive skill is the equivalent of resonance so great, she can't even tell there's a difference between them and humans.]

You must be "Dezel"?

[The hair? Oh. It's true, that's one way of telling, especially if you don't have proper resonance. It's just not something he depends on.]

That's me. I'm a wind seraph.

[He shifts a little, and she might be able to tell that his eyes are closed.]

And you are?

[She can tell his eyes are closed, but she's not thinking anything of it- maybe he's tired, or maybe he just hurt his eyes in the fight with a fucking dragon. Who knows?]

Nightingale. Gray Nightingale of Takshaka, though I doubt the full thing means anything to you.

You're Sora's friend, right? And one of Sorey's, uh, 'Sub Lords'? That needs a way better name, by the way.

[nah girl he's been fucked up for a while]

Nightingale. Like the bird. [He seems satisfied with this explanation. Only Dezel would find it absolutely fine to be named after an animal.]

-- Yeah. I traveled with the Shepherd for a while.

What got you all mixed up in this?

Yeah. My whole team is named after birds. It's kind of a long story.

[She seems pretty fond of the bird names, though, honestly.]

I'm friends with Sorey and Mikleo, and I'm a pretty good mage. Sorey came to me asking for help in getting some kind of magical divorce with him? I was pretty forceful in calling him dumb over that, but I think I just made shit worse. So I told Mikleo what happened.

[Basically, it's all her fault, or at least that's how she's thinking of it. She's too fucked up on the painkillers right now to think that sharing all of this might be a bad idea.]

So, I went down to try to fix my fuckup and help them, and it turns out you can't actually sustain tricking the two of them for very long. Especially when they know what you're afraid of. And so I ended up here.

Nothing wrong with that. [He traveled with people who called themselves the Sparrowfeathers, after all. Basically formed them himself.]

... Ah.

[It's okay, he's not going to freak out or judge her.]

It was already bad before you got involved. We all looked the other way because we didn't think it could happen, but it did. They weren't themselves on that planet-- they were hellions.

[He isn't sure if she knows what happened. He didn't see her there, at the end.]

You a fan of birds, then?

[Nightingale herself never was, not until her team. But now she has to admit she has a fondness, every bird bringing back memories of the teammate who shared that name.]

Yeah, I know. They would never do that. It's not exactly the same, but I've seen the same thing happen to people before, getting possessed by thoughts and feelings that aren't really them.

... I just wish I could have helped more.

[If you're expecting him to gush about how awesome birds are... well.]

Animals are better than people.

[He's just a tsundere, don't listen to him.]

No... It's better that you didn't. You probably already figured this out, but Mikleo isn't here. Even someone like Sorey would have a hard time forgiving the person who ended his suffering.

[It's better that it was Zaveid. Someone who's killed dragons before, someone who understands what Sorey is going through on an intimate level. Shepherds and seraphim aren't all that different after all.]

That's why one of us did it.

[But if I was stronger, is what she starts to say. But she swallows it back. Dezel's right. Even if she was stronger, it wouldn't have changed anything.]

... He'll forgive you?

If not, we can stand it. As seraphim we're meant to be the Shepherd's guides and companions. We take on his burdens, his sins, so that he doesn't have to deal with it by himself. It's part of the pact. Part of the role we're meant to play.

[He sends a little breeze to ruffle some flowers on a nearby nightstand.]

He'll need friends like you to get him through this.

Edited 2016-09-18 06:27 (UTC)

... That's... That's a shitty pact.

[She hesitates to say it, but it's true.]

Guides and companions, my ass. Aren't you his friends, too?

There's always sacrifices involved when you're trying to cleanse the world.

[She's not wrong, so he's not going to argue that part.]

Yes, and? Human hearts breed malevolence. If there's any kind of discord between you both, it'll grow into conflict and we'll be right back where we started.

You can help him in other ways. You don't have to do everything.

... Does conflict always breed malevolence? You can't have any conflict without it?

No, but resentment and regret do. It's a fine line.

[He should know, considering he practically bathes in that stuff.]

... That doesn't seem right.

[she just sighs.]

You have to throttle your own feelings to stay alive? And any humans who feel those things hurt you just by being there?

It's less throttling and more like... letting go.

[Dezel isn't the best at that. He's wearing his dead mentor's clothes after all.]

But you've got the gist of it. Humans and seraphim have always had a tenuous relationship.

That's... not right.

[Nightingale, for all her dramatic friendship speeches, is really bad at words. She can't articulate well why this twists her up inside. She thinks of how she had gone so numb for so long, unable to feel anything, not allowed to feel anything. Being able to feel again- Even the negative feelings that made her a miasma of malevolence before- are still like a breath of air to a drowning person after that.

So... To hear about how this entire world forces people to carefully regulate their emotions twists something inside of her. That's not right. She doesn't like it at all.

All she can manage to say, though, is one pathetic-sounding 'that's not right'.]

[She sounds a little more invested than Dezel gave her credit for. Something about this goes against her convictions. A shattered soul like hers wouldn't last long on his world, that's for sure, but that doesn't seem to be the reason.

Oh, well. He's not going to pry too deeply. He doesn't get involved with other people unless it's unavoidable-- for both his safety and theirs.]

... I hope you understand why people like Sorey and Mikleo are so rare.

... Not as rare as you might think. I was on a team full of people like them.

[She sounds nostalgic- She misses her team so much. They were all... mostly all good people.]

I'm glad they're rare, though. On your world, at least... They deserve better than that.

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