[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.)

Comments

[waterfell]

[Now? Well, it had been coming for at least half a year, really. Her smile ebbed, and while she didn't move away from Kanda, she stared overhead at the stars instead.]

We were an immortal race living on the moon, watching over Earth and its evolution. [She tells the start of the story like anyone who knows it would.] However, the prince of Earth and the princess of the Moon Kingdom fell in love, even though it was forbidden. [One of the many origins of her wariness about 'love'.]

When they broke the laws, war broke out between the two kingdoms. Even though she was considered the enemy of his people, he protected her. When he died for it, she used her power to destroy the Earth and Moon both, and everything on the. Evolution started again from the beginning. [One of the more admitted reasons for her enmity towards the senshi and especially the princess - though it hadn't been the first.]

[decaying]

[Holy shit. This story.]

Wait, the moon princess? Usagi? That blond idiot can destroy the world?

[waterfell]

She did. [Not can. Did.] That girl hates the world, except for him.

Tens of thousands of years later, we were reborn. The princess' advisers took our memories of that past and her identity, and told us to search for her and to protect her again instead. [This is her version and she's sticking to it.]

That was a mistake. [For so many reasons.] Because she was protected, she was kept safe until she could awaken to do it again. [Which, she implies, was clearly the point of hiding it and the memory tampering - which Artemis had admitted to.]

I took her life before that happened.

[decaying]

What an idiot. Blowing up the world over some guy. [Women.]

People die all the time. Except for people like you, of course....

[waterfell]

[Kanda could pronounce it idiotic, shrug, and move on. That was harder when you devoted a year, two years of your life to ending it. She wanted to say more. She wanted to say something closer to the full truth, as if Kanda were truly a priest, and her confessor.]

I left the sailor senshi anyway, before that. There was no reason for me to stay with them. My comrades now were their enemies before.

[decaying]

So you left them because you killed the princess?

[waterfell]

No. There was no place for me with them; I left before that.

[decaying]

Why? [It's an honestly curious question.]

[waterfell]

Because.... I saw they were falling apart anyway. It was better to leave that behind.

[decaying]

Why didn't you help them?

[waterfell]

[Those first answers came so easily, like a practiced school lesson recited by a star pupil. But this one...

She shakes her head.]

I changed that world's fate a different way. [It still doesn't answer why.] Staying with them, there was no chance of that. There was no point.

[decaying]

I don't get it. I know you were upset that they were holding you back, but I thought they meant more to you than that.

[waterfell]

No; it was just sort of fun for awhile.

[Something's wrong about that. In her mind, it's mostly the fact that the 'truth' was she didn't mean more to them.]

[decaying]

I don't believe that's the only reason you left. [He got a little closer.] Tell me.

[waterfell]

[She could say all the old reasons, but the memory of Kunzite stops her, of him refusing to allow her to pretend to be noble and reminding her that she was nothing more, would be nothing more, than the girl he found on her knees, pathetically lonely.

Maybe it didn't sound as good as 'protecting the planet'. He'd said that didn't matter; her reasons were enough. But lying to herself about them would change nothing.]

It really was as I said: There was no place for me there. We all fought alone anyway.

[decaying]

[If Ami didn't want to tell him, because he knew she was keeping something, he wouldn't pry. In time it would come out. Things always did.]

[waterfell]

[The silence feels like a prompt to continue, but she had told the truth. (Hadn't she?

Yes. She'd admitted there was nothing to the senshi so-called friendship, that she hadn't been wanted. Her true reasons for turning her back.)]

So I left. I have no intention of fighting for them now. Why should I, just because of a past life?

[decaying]

I can relate. Past lives shouldn't be the reason to do something, but what's making you side the way you are? You could have gone your own way but instead you went with the enemy. Well, your old enemy.

[waterfell]

[There is no good answer to that. Not at all. Because being asked makes her realize...

It's a blank. There's nothing in between 'leaving' and 'enmity' that makes sense, and she hates that all-too-familiar sensation of missing something, something very important.

One thought comes to help her.]

Because, when there was no one for me, one of them was the one to take me in, the only one who thought of me.

[She wanted to be needed, wanted. She wanted someone to want to be with her. The rest mattered so much less.]

[decaying]

Kunzite. [No, that is not dislike you hear in that voice of his.]

[waterfell]

[He's not gentle, and there's a lot she hates about how he treats her, but she owes Kunzite a lot.]

Kunzite. He was the one to bring me to the Dark Kingdom. [Even in the face of Beryl's angry disapproval. Only Kunzite had ever believed in her.]

[decaying]

[Kanda didn't like hearing that bastards name. Sure, he didn't know a thing about him but any man's name coming out of his woman's lips that wasn't his own made him anxious. It was just out of principle. He needed to stab him in the face.]

Why did he do it?

[waterfell]

[Why? She thinks of Kunzite, telling her he wanted her, telling her she was fascinating, telling Beryl she could accomplish everything they set out to do and was a worthy replacement for Zoisite, a general.

She thinks of reporting information about the senshi to him. That thought is less pleasant.]

It was because he believed I could do what I set out to do.

[decaying]

And that was destroy the scouts? [He's trying to piece things together.]

[waterfell]

[Here, she's on much surer ground.]

I wanted that. I wanted my revenge. Then, when I learned about the past life, and what she did, I knew they were the enemy anyway from the beginning.