[OPEN] Valentine's Mingle

[passingmod]

Who: Everyone! Open to All
What: Valentine's Day mingle logs
When: any time generally around the holiday
Where: awkward cupid / conversation hearts / repay the gesture

Love is in the air, from chocolated Japan to cherubic America, from Victorian times to the far-off future. There are dreams of romance, candy, timid (and bold!) love confessions, and hearts everywhere.

(ooc: This is a post to keep threads together for Valentine's Day. Separate posts or additional subthreads are also fine, and this one is optional. Since some of the affects have potential to force a character's reactions icly, it may be best to discuss between the players or note your preferences/anything you'd rather avoid.)

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[waterfell]

Back in junior high, Ami had once solved the problem of loneliness by brainwashing her entire school class to adore her. So she wasn't particularly in a position to lecture about this basic concept, even if she'd eventually grown away from it. She certainly still knew the feeling of wanting someone all to herself, looking only at her. What else had everything towards Usagi truly been about? (What else would prompt her, across dreams and the multiverse, to take John before Halsey could, or to keep him at Mariner Castle, no matter how she'd insist it was for his own good?)

However, if Cortana ever hurt John, Mercury would not hesitate to end her. John was the more important. Mercury needed that calm assurance, and that goodness that fascinated her as much as it confused her. She needed them more than anyone.]

And who else could Cortana mean? It could no longer be ignored.

"Could it be you mean John?" she asked bluntly. "I won't let you harm him in the meanwhile." A flat, definite statement. There were certain things this rampant AI had better get clear from the start.

[forhiscause]

Ami's words started several uncomfortable thoughts in her head. It made something snap. She was just like Halsey, telling her what she could and couldn't do. What did they know, they didn't care about John the way she did, they only wanted him because they needed them for whatever stupid psychotic issue they had. Halsey was a bitch, Ami was no different. Condescending bitch.

"John is mine, no one cares about him the way I do. I just want to help him, why can't I keep him? I do everything for him! Everything! And what do I get? I go mad! I'm going to die while he- while he-"

Her body changes glow and something snaps, red tendrils spreading around the nearby buckets breaking them. The hearts spread all over the floor as she knelt down grabbing her head.

"I'm sorry." Her voice echoed. "I-I didn't mean that." Yes. Yes I did.

[waterfell]

What struck Mercury wasn't the words at all. It was that Cortana was so able to say everything that still lurked inside Mercury. She'd wanted people all to herself in exactly the way Cortana was talking about John.

She was the one who did everything: agreed with Usagi every time, in every argument among the group, always supporting any word that came out of Usagi's mouth. She was the one who was a soldier with Usagi; Osaka Naru wasn't. She was the one there from the beginning; the other sailor senshi weren't. And yet, Usagi had never once looked at her. She remembered all that. Usagi had never once looked at her until everything changed and they'd become enemies.

It was almost worth it, for that. Just to see Usagi finally have to look at her, to be able to demand it.

More importantly, Cortana had to be brought under control, one way or another. This wanton.. destruction... could not continue. Mercury eyed the spilled hearts coldly before looking back at the AI with scant pity.

"Someone," she does not talk about her father, or the time when she still had a family, by name to Cortana, "once taught me ways to focus my concentration. He said chess and swimming were good for that."

Not perfectly, but they did help when her own mind took those downward spirals sometimes.

[forhiscause]

Cortana knew Chess. Cortana knew all about chess. War was like chess and she had seen so much of it. It was hurt duty to be a part of it. She had played chess a few times, mostly with Halsey, and those periods hadn't really gone well. Why was this girl reminding her of such terrible thoughts?

"I have never been swimming." She spoke truthfully. "Obviously. What does that feel like?"

[waterfell]

She'd been being sincere, remembering those two pursuits as helpful in moments very similar to Cortana's moments of confusion.

Swimming, then. It was something difficult to explain to someone who couldn't feel the damp of the water, the way it closed all around you without being oppressive, they way it freed you to glide to the surface or plunge down to the depths, a whole new dimension of movements.

"I like it," she said simply. "Your whole body moves differently. You can clear your head."

[forhiscause]

"There's no water here, just buckets with hearts in them."

She would have to manage, she moved back away from the buckets she dropped and moved over to Ami. She hesitantly moved and grabbed her arm, pulling her away as if leaving the spot would make her forget what just happened.

"What would you need to clear your mind for. Don't you have a man to scream at? It helps. Alot." John knew it.

[waterfell]

She needs to clear her head because of the headaches if she doesn't. Because of the way doubts and strange visions of a different past cloud her mind if she doesn't focus. Because of the sharp downward spiral her thoughts will take if she doesn't keep them regimented this strictly.

In short, she needs to clear her head for many of the same reasons as Cortana.

As for a man... Mercury seemed to consider that a moment. She didn't, often, scream or yell around Kanda (aside from back soon after they'd first met, when he'd thought she was that other person with her name). But the fact that he came to mind, that meant something, didn't it? It meant that she had someone?

"Maybe I do," she said, but it was more to herself.