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(no subject)

Who: Velvet Crowe and You!
Broadcast: Fleetwide
Action: aboard the SS Red Fish
When: right after the Shuffle

[Velvet had woken up in one strange tin can and had only just started to get her bearings when she was suddenly transported to another strange tin can. This isn't how she was expecting today to go.

She stumbles a little but manages to catch herself, oblivious to the fanfare that signals her arrival.]

Where--?

[She takes a moment to steady herself, shaking her head to clear it. She blinks, focusing on her surroundings, trying to make sense of things.]

...Is that pudding?

[Where does pudding fit into all this? And that's not even mentioning the confetti. Actually she hasn't even noticed that yet, or the fact that a lot of it has fluttered into her hair. She looks pretty festive for someone so cranky.]

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We...have common goals and an understanding.

[Her crew is important to her, Eizen and his pirates included. Eizen trusts her and the rest of the party enough to tell them about his sister. But she's reluctant to use the word "friend", given what she is and how she is.]

[..........okay] I mean, friends have those too, [not that he's accusing you of having friends, lords forbid,] but I guess it's hard to determine sometimes.

Something like that.

[Last time she had someone she called a friend she sort of ate her, so. It's awkward, okay.]

[These things happen, sometimes you gotta just live and let...not live.

Still, Maltran was always pretty calm when she was hiding her true self, except Velvet isn't trying to hide any of her malevolence. It's kind of throwing him off, how calm she is when giving off so much of it. He can tell Mikleo's thrown by it too, just by the way he's silently tense inside of his soul.]

...I'm sorry I can't tell you anything else about what happens to him. When I first met him, he'd already been a dragon for a long, long time.

It's fine. I guess he knew it was going to happen eventually.

[She sighs. Eizen's gonna Eizen. At least he's himself here.]

How did Zaveid take it? He wasn't much for killing when I knew him.

[She expects Zaveid takes it badly, though, given how different he seems now compared to before.]

[He kind of doesn't want to ask, because it feels like going behind Zaveid's back for information, but considering how hard it is to get Zaveid to open up anyway...] ...he doesn't have much the same opinion these days, I don't think. Out of necessity.

[She raises an eyebrow at that.]

That so? I guess his hair isn't the only thing that changed.

[She's not actually judging. She's killed enough people herself, she's not in any position to judge. It's just a little surprising. Though it does make sense. She doesn't know how much time has passed for Zaveid, but she knows the world must have changed when Artorius was defeated. That would lead to the people in it changing too, for better or worse.]

[Sorey tilts his head back against the wall; Mikleo had caught him up on some of the things he'd been keeping secret, but not everything. And after that talk with Zaveid...about being tethered, Sorey's not sure he wants to know.

Still.]

What...was he like before?

[She considers the question. She wouldn't say she knows Zaveid well. She meant it when she said he was probably more Eizen's friend than hers. She's been around him enough to make some observations, though.]

Kind of...idealistic, I guess. He didn't like the abbey any more than we did, but he refused to kill the guards and exorcist he fought. He yelled at us a few times for being too willing to kill. [She shrugs.] He still helped us out when we needed it, though.

[She pauses and then adds:]

And he wore a shirt.

Edited (punctuation) 2017-04-16 23:46 (UTC)

[Well that confirms whether or not he thought Velvet was the sort of person to kill other people, not that it was much of a mystery.]

When I first met Zaveid, he was going around killing hellions, because he couldn't purify them. But then again, there hadn't been a Shepherd for quite a while.

[As soon as he says the word "Shepherd" her demeanor shifts. She has kind of a mental record scratch as she freezes. She immediately forgets that they were talking about Zaveid and Eizen a moment ago. She looks at him sharply, not making an sudden movements, but pretty obviously not as calm as she was a moment ago.]

Shepherd, huh. [She says it like a curse.] They're still using that word.

[Honestly her anger isn't really directed at Sorey specifically. It's just a sort of restless freeform rage borne from her hatred of Artorius and the concept he created.]

[Yeah Mikleo is kind of exhaling very exasperatedly in Sorey's soul right now, like, you idiot you know what that word means to the people of their time, why are you so thoughtless, which, yes, sorry, he knows. It just kind of popped out.]

Ah. Right, the Shepherd- he's not a good person, in your time. Right?

[She snorts, bitterly.]

I guess that depends on what you consider good. The needs of the many, right? He's good at that.

[She speaks of him in present tense because to her he's still alive, still an enemy, still the brother-in-law she loved who betrayed her.]

He's also good at human sacrifice, enslaving malakhim and forcing people to turn into daemons. Anything for his Utopia of Reason.

Edited (wording/voice check) 2017-04-17 05:02 (UTC)

[Oh lords, all of those things? As if just enslaving malakhim wasn't bad enough, he apparently had to dabble in literally everything bad as well? No wonder Eizen's reaction was so visceral...

And that bit about Utopia of Reason...that's worrying. Even with Mikleo hissing don't you dare tell her, Sorey!, he has to- he has to know more, at least.]

What do you mean, his 'Utopia of Reason?'

[She tilts her head.]

They don't talk about Artorius' ideals in the future? If you suppress human emotion you get rid of malevolence.

[Not that Artorius really advertised his ultimate goal with Innominat, she supposes it wouldn't be hard for history to leave that out.]

Um. [It sounds a little familiar (control your emotions, don't let them rule over you) but like, to incredible extremes.] No, not...like that, anyway. I think it's more that, if you do worship, you're encouraged to live a life free of selfishness and deception...I think. I haven't attended many church services.

I've never heard of a Shepherd Artorius before. We've lost a lot of our historical records and all... [He really should tell her he's a Shepherd. If she finds out through Eizen she'll be even more upset, like he'd lied to her. He really, really should tell her.]

[She almost corrects him, she's not talking about living virtuously. She's talking about literally suppressing emotions. But she doesn't, because the last thing he says surprises her a little, enough that some of the anger and bitterness gives way to uncertainty and wariness.]

Really? He was the first exorcist to call himself the Shepherd and you've never heard of him?

[Shakes his head, folding his hands together behind his back and leaning back on them.] I'm sorry, I haven't.

[Sorry, Mikleo...!]

I...I'm even a Shepherd, and I've never heard of him. Though I did kind of fall into the role in a hurry.

[She stares at him incredulous, both because of his admission and because the idea of Artorius being unknown in the future is surprisingly comforting. Albeit in a rather petty way. It calms her a little. At least enough that she doesn't lash out immediately.]

Are you stupid? What kind of idiot tells an angry daemon he's a thing she hates?

[She's not exactly enraged at this point, not anymore, but she's wary and not entirely trusting.]

[Yeah hahaha see that's exactly what Mikleo is yelling about at him right this moment, funnily enough...]

Um. It just didn't really seem very fair, for me to talk to you like normal when you didn't know. [Especially because he's something she hates. Like he's deceiving her to get information, when if she knew she probably wouldn't want to talk to him.] Though I really don't want to fight you, especially not here. These ships really aren't that large and someone could get hurt.

I didn't have any reason to want to fight you before.

[Not that she seems to be jumping into attack mode now, either. The more he talks the more he proves he's really nothing like Artorius. He's not trying to manipulate her. He's just honest to a fault, apparently. "A good kid," Zaveid kept saying. It occurs to her now, this is why.]

.....that is........a really good point. [HE COULDN'T TAKE THE GUILT OKAY

IMAGINED GUILT OR NOT]

[She scoffs.]

You really are nothing like him.

[Her hatred of Artorius is so intensely personal it's difficult for her to fully project it onto someone else. Especially someone who bears so little resemblance to him. Even if he calls himself a Shepherd.]

[Considering how much she hates this guy, Sorey's just gonna take that as a good sign. And honestly, she's the nicest hellion- daemon, that is, that he's ever met, gruff or not.]

I'm- [Ah, wait. She doesn't like him apologizing for things that aren't his fault.] I don't know if this will make you feel any better, but Shepherds- at least all the legends I've read and been told, they don't enslave malakhim anymore. And I've never heard of that emotional suppression thing, so at the very least, this Artorius's ideals don't stick.

[She shifts and looks away. She hadn't give too much thought about how history would remember Artorius. Her focus was killing him. She didn't think too far beyond that. When Sorey first mentioned the word Shepherd she had thought that must mean history remembered Artorius as some kind of hero or martyr, even after he was struck down.

Instead he wasn't remembered at all. The concept of Shepherd didn't belong to him. He was nothing. His ideals were nothing. Eizen had told her they won, and even though she hasn't experienced that herself yet, it feels a little more like a real victory now.]

Yeah...maybe a little.

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