summonerd | i just wanna know: who broke it?

i just wanna know: who broke it?

[Sheena'd thought she was all done with dimensional travel, now that the two worlds were united. But here she is, having fallen asleep in one world and woken up in a Tethe'alla that's just different enough from the one she knows to be constantly jarring. Her connections to Aselia's summon spirits dangle loose, snapped by distance - not even Origin's power could follow her here, it seems. That's more than a little unsettling.

It takes her some time, alone in a bizarro version of Meltokio as she is, but eventually she stumbles on a lead - an old scientific journal, a mention of the power of something called an Aegis being able to transcend space and time, at least in theory. And a little asking around tells her that Tethe'alla has its own Aegis, though no one's seen it for years. Well. Worth a shot, right?

Somehow she manages to talk her way into the Tethe'allan castle where the Aegis's core crystal awaits being woken up, with a series of smiles and her very best politicking - yes, of course she's got nothing but loyalty for Tethe'alla, of course she's skilled at this, of course it'd be a great honor.

(Zelos would be proud, she thinks, wryly.)

They're dubious, but her persistence wears them down, or maybe they're just desperate enough for a return of the Aegis's power to let her try, and the orange core crystal is offered out to her.

She takes a deep breath, and reaches out to touch it.]

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"Augh. I mean, I guess, but I can still want the sun instead!"

Zelos sets his hands on his hips after that, and he can't help it when he tears his gaze away from the grey above and over to Malos when he hears the blade's question. He snorts, a little huff of air escaping his mouth as his eyebrows shoot upwards. Has Zelos seen--what kinda question is that? "I've definitely seen rain before, thank you very much," the Aegis laughs, flapping a hand about in front of him while his trademark shit-eating grin settles on his face. "Why do you ask?"

"W- well," Malos splutters, blushing faintly (the purple glows a little brighter thanks to the cloud cover), because fuck that was a really dumb question, wasn't it, why did you open your mouth, Malos. "I dunno just curious I guess," he says in a rush, then coughs into his hand, then clears his throat.

"Anyway," he says, arms crossed over his chest again. He sends a look at Zelos, curious but trying not to look like he's curious, or staring, or anything. "How've you been doing, Zelos? I know traveling on the run while also being on a rescue mission ain't exactly the most glorious way to be living, but, like-- you enjoying yourself?"

Under any other circumstances Zelos would perhaps at least feel some sort of shame at making a grown-ass man blush like that, but given the ridiculousness of Malos' question itself, all that happens is that Zelos ends up laughing. Good to see someone else in this godforsaken group blushing other than himself! Geez. Zelos keeps his hands on his hips and looks up at the sky, pretending, for as long as it takes for Malos to speak again, that he's not aware of the other's antsy staring. That sticks out to the Aegis more than it otherwise should have, makes him think of Lloyd, of Anna. Blood relation or not, Malos is so very much like the rest of his family.

He offers a thoughtful hum. "Well, as much as I can, I guess," Zelos answers, shrugging again. "I could probably do with finer meals and softer bedding, but I guess that's the price of tagging along with you outdoorsy types." Pepper a laugh in here, something controlled that shakes the shoulders, accompanied by a self-satisfied smirk. "Still, I kind of miss my bed, you know! Softest thing in Tethe'alla!"

"Ha, that's a mood," Malos says. "But, hey, this ain't forever. 'ventually we'll get you and Colette safe and somewhere where you can settle down, and have a nice bed again, and only travel if you wanna travel."

Malos turns, sends Zelos a reassuring smile, as a thought occurs to him. "Once we're in Sylvarant we might be able to find an inn to stay at for a night, if you want. Might be nice to sleep in a real bed, y'know."

He laughs, then his tone softens, a little less jokey but no less sincere.

"Honestly... anything else you want, just lemme know, I'll see what I can do."

"Man, you got my full support if your mission is to find a good bed. I swear my back will be permanently damaged at this rate!"

It's a joke accompanied by a laugh and a grin, something weaved out of pure amusement to hide the lurking anxiety that starts to rise from Zelos' core crystal and up his throat, threatening to seize it should he stumble and the mask fall. Malos' comment about he and Colette settling down isn't malicious, he knows, but it still sparks a fire of uncertainty in the Aegis anyway.

What is he going to do when he and Colette are safe? It's not like they can hide away from the humans, or like they can fool themselves into thinking they'll have peace. Being an Aegis means being persecuted and terrorized for the rest of their lives. And that's not even counting the elephant in the room: Zelos and Colette were made to destroy, it's their purpose, their entire being. What happens when they aren't needed for that anymore?

What happens if his sister doesn't even want--

A clap of thunder above wakes Zelos from his little reverie, and he can't hide the way he jumps a little at the sound--that was so close. He turns his attention back to the sky, pouts. "Definitely did like the way that sounded behind walls," he jokes.

Malos jumps a little at the thunderclap as well-- he didn't even see the lightning, so he definitely wasn't expecting that, let alone so close. He blinks, looks to Zelos, then laughs, shaky but good natured. "Yeah, thunder's a little scarier up close," he agrees. "But it-- ah."

And then it starts raining. No fanfare, the heavens just open up. It's not pouring, exactly, but the rain is steady nonetheless. Any longer than a few minutes in it and they'll all be drenched.

"Hah, there it is!" Malos says, delighted. He'll probably hate being wet twenty minutes from now, but at the moment it's nice. "This is nice."

First observation made about rain: it's fucking cold. Not that the weather wasn't already cold in the first place, but the droplets of it that fall and slowly start soaking their clothes and hair are definitely enough to make Zelos shiver when they touch skin. He jumps a little, his second observation hitting late: this, it's a lot different than what he'd thought it'd be while he'd observed it from behind intricate glass windows, less impersonal, more real. He's no stranger to water, but rain is... definitely something else.

Malos sounds delighted, talking about how nice the sudden rainfall is. Which, in all fairness, Zelos can see the appeal of it: he feels refreshed and stimulated, his mind working to make little notes of the way the rain affects his skin and the environment around them, the way the smell of ether in the ambient is disguised with the slowly rising petrichor from the soil. This is... nice, Zelos guesses. It's an experience, at least. It's--

--making him sneeze.

Water drips down his now flattened hair and onto his nose, and with the cold of the breeze hitting his wet skin, it makes him sneeze. The Aegis shivers again. His temperature is lowering. Not dangerously, but more than what he's comfortable with, and, okay, what the fuck. Zelos tries to heat himself back up with his inner ether reserves and comes up with an ineffective shudder instead, and the longer he stands in the rain his hair feels even more disgusting, his clothes now clinging to him, and--

He sneezes again.

Actually, fuck this. Zelos grumbles under his breath. "Easy for you to say," he complains in a low voice, rubbing at his arms with wet gloves that holy shit are starting to feel so gross clinging to his hands. "You're not the fire blade around here! And camp is gonna suck, too! Do you have any idea how much more ether it takes to ignite wet wood?" The rain is falling at an angle, so Zelos whines out loud while walking over to stand behind Malos, trying to somehow reduce how wet he can get. He scoffs. "I feel like I should charge you for these unacceptable working conditions, or something."

"C'mon, it's not gonna kill you," Malos laughs, considering Zelos. He sounds so miserable, and the way he hides behind Malos is kind of endearing. "Should let up before too long, and I wouldn't ask you to light a fire while it's raining anyway. We can live without."

He flashes a quick smile at Zelos. "We can head back to camp, if you want. Shouldn't be too hard to figure out some kind of shelter so that you don't have to get totally soaked, even if I gotta tie a blanket between two trees or some shit."

Another scoff, as Zelos considers Malos' words, as he rubs at his arms for warmth. The ether around them is wavering with the rain, prickling against his skin. "Honestly, why haven't you people invested on a camping tent, or something? You'd think you'd be--"

He stops, abruptly, choking on his words. Stands upright. The Aegis feels it in his veins, the way the ether in the area is suddenly pulled in the general direction where the camp is, something so strong and immediate that Zelos is pretty fucking sure that Malos would have to be either dead or unconscious not to have noticed too. It's not natural; it isn't quite like a cannon blast, but it's not like a normal blade's ether discharge, either. It feels more like a vacuum gathering ether in a specific area back at camp, concentrating it, and holding it right there.

And then there's the dread that drips into his core from the emotional bleed, making Zelos' skin crawl and his core to freeze over.

Thunder claps again, somewhere off in the distance. Zelos hardly pays it any mind. Instead he turns to look at Malos again, visible confusion on his face as he silently asks, for a second, just what the fuck that was. The Aegis doesn't wait for an answer; he twists on his heel and starts sprinting back to camp, uncaring of the rain or if the other blade is even following.

Edited 2019-08-11 21:16 (UTC)

As soon as the rain starts pouring down, Lloyd groans mid-way through a sentence in his conversation with Sheena, feeling his hair deflate as fringe starts to fall in front of his eyes. He pats at his pockets, hoping he still has the one hair tie he usually kept around for Colette's sake, and pouts when he can't find it, only finding carving tools in one pocket, and the core crystal Kratos had entrusted him with earlier in the other.

("Taking him into town is a bad idea so... Would you watch him, please?" Kratos had asked, pressing Mithos' core crystal into Lloyd's gloved hand. Touched by the trust hidden in those few words, Lloyd nodded.

"I'll keep him safe.")

Grumbling, Lloyd starts to make his way under treetop cover, grabbing Sheena's wrist and pulling her with him. "You wouldn't happen to have a spare hair tie, would you?" He asks, petulant, when they're at least somewhat sheltered from the worst of the rain. "I can't find one! This sucks!"

And then. A noise.

Something incessant, on the fainter side of things, but still audible. It pulls at Lloyd's attention, distracting him from his whining, and causes him to furrow his brows, listening for where it's coming from. It sounds close, but he can't see anything worrying, least of all through all of this rain. "Do you hear that?"

Dormancy is boring, in all honesty. Not that it can be avoided. Mithos has to do checks, make sure his core is functioning properly at a fraction of the power it's been using for decades, now. It's... kind of empty, honestly. He misses the warmth of Martel's ghost in his veins.

It's alright, though. It's only for a little while. They'll save the rest of her from Sylvarant, reunite her shards, and then she and Mithos can form a loop through Kratos, just like before.

Just like before.

Mithos runs through the checks one more time, making sure his core is functioning properly, making sure all the old pathways for resonance haven't completely atrophied. It all looks fine.

He pings the outside network to get Kratos' attention. Waits. The response isn't immediate, which is somewhat strange, but Mithos supposes there are any number of reasons Kratos could be busy at the moment. Perhaps the safer, smarter thing to do would be to wait until he feels Kratos' ether brush his core crystal again, but Mithos has always been impatient.

He pings again, and again, and again, waiting.

Well, Sheena was having a nice day. The sky opening up over them puts a little bit of a damper on that.

Those clouds look like the storm is about to get worse, though, and she tenses just a little at a distant rumble of thunder. It's not that close, and it doesn't elicit anywhere near the same response as it would have before she'd made her pact with Volt, but -- ugh. Lloyd's hand on her wrist stops her before she can worry about it more than that, anyway. She does her best not to laugh, ridiculous as he looks with his hair all over his face like that. Her own ponytail is heavy with rain, lying flat in a way it never does when dry.

"Yeah, hang on," she says, reaches into a pocket with her free hand. She was sure she had a spare ribbon or something in here somewhere - where is it? She pauses to look up, hand still digging deep into the pocket, as Lloyd continues.

"I don't hear anything but the storm," she says, with a frown. But Lloyd's hearing is better than hers, so -- "You don't think someone found us, do you?"

The pinging noise is definitely there, Lloyd swears, so he keeps looking, squinting through the rain for any causes. But it's so close, and Sheena says she can't hear it, so is he making it up? Sometimes that happens - especially in the aftermath of becoming an angel - he'll hear noises, usually higher pitched droning ones, and nobody else can hear them like he can.

But this noise is different. Lloyd doesn't think he's hearing nothing.

Standing still, enhancing his hearing just the slightest amount, he closes his eyes and concentrates. Slowing his breath, calming the heartbeat in his ears, and picking apart what's coming from the storm, he focuses in on the ringing that's driving him crazy, constant and impatient as it is. It's so close. So close, and it's not coming from Sheena.

It's coming from him. Or, more specifically, the core crystal in his pocket.

"No, nobody found us," Lloyd finally answers, opening his eyes wide, "but something is wrong with Mithos' core crystal, I think. That's where the noise is coming from."

Dread spikes itself into Lloyd's heart. He doesn't understand why Mithos' crystal is making noises like it is, doesn't know if he did something wrong and broke it - honestly, he hadn't done anything that could do that, he thinks! Aw man, what did he do, Kratos is gonna kill him! Hesitantly, Lloyd reaches back into his pocket and pulls out Mithos' crystal, checking for any possible cracks or -

Ether brushes Mithos' core crystal again, a half-hearted request for resonance that he could deny, but for a split second Mithos isn't paying attention closely to the taste of it-- it's something just shy of Kratos, something deeper and sweeter like Father's, except it's been centuries since he tasted Father's ether and it's not quite Father's, anyway-- but for a split second it's close enough that Mithos just doesn't think about it until after he's accepted the resonance request.

He pulls himself into the physical world, his core crystal glowing vibrant blue and lifting itself out of Lloyd's hands, ether gathering around it and then around Lloyd. There's a flash of blue light, Mithos' ether anchors him to Lloyd, and then Mithos stands there, and his quiet impatience-relief-anticipation rapidly becomes horror because he doesn't see Kratos, and he realizes now Lloyd's ether is Like Kratos' but Isn't Kratos' and--

And of course, it's raining. Fan-fucking-tastic.

"What the fuck," Mithos says, first of all, tasting dread that isn't his and meeting it with anger. "Who--"

He cuts off. Remembers, vaguely, that Kratos had had traveling companions. And Lloyd-- Mithos doesn't recognize him as Lloyd, but he recognizes those red eyes, and the way the rain makes Lloyd's hair stick to his face is familiar, too, enough that Mithos might laugh if he wasn't fucking furious and borderline terrified. (But Lloyd does not look malicious or excited about having just resonated with The Aegis, in fact he looks rather like he would rather have done anything else, which is a point or two in his favor.)

He scans the nearby area for ether signatures. A blade he doesn't recognize. Another Aegis--not Martel. (One of the bastards, then.) Sheena is human, and Lloyd, the boy he resonated with, is...

Not human? But not a blade, either. It's too scattered, too ancient. Familiar, but in the wrong ways. Hmm. Curiosity piques in Mithos, despite himself. If this resonance lasts much longer, he'll ask.

No Kratos, though. Not nearby. That's more important.

"Where's Kratos?" Mithos demands.

Oh, there her spare ribbon is. She'd been hoping she had a proper hair tie, short as Lloyd's hair is, but that's better than nothing. She's about to offer it to him, as soon as he opens his eyes, but then he pulls out Mithos's core crystal, and Sheena suddenly realizes just what it is that Lloyd is probably hearing.

"Lloyd, wait," she calls, a touch desperately, reaches out to stop him, but--

The light that surrounds Mithos's core crystal is almost blindingly bright, enough that it might as well not have been storming for that moment, like the sun's here underneath the trees with them. There's a clap of thunder in the distance, a little closer than the last one had been, but Sheena barely reacts to it, eyes wide as Mithos takes shape in front of them. With Lloyd as his driver.

Mithos demands to know where Kratos is, and she lets out a breath she hadn't meant to hold, letting her hand fall back to her side. Lloyd's probably having a significantly worse time of things than she is, so she answers for him. "He and Anna went to pick up more supplies," she says. "We're almost out of Tethe'alla, so this was the last chance we had to restock." Gods, this isn't the same Mithos. She tries to rearrange her face into something more welcoming, like she hadn't just jumped out of her skin at him being here.

Blinding light illuminates the dreary and dark space around them as the crystal lifts itself from Lloyd's hand, the boy raising his arm up and squinting as it assaults his vision. Confusion comes and passes like a speeding train through the seconds it takes for Mithos' form to assemble itself, but realization hits Lloyd like a victim on the train track.

"Oh, fuck," he says, eyes wide with horror as his earlier dread makes way for fear, quickly curling it's clawed hand around his heart and choking him at his throat. But then he feels - a lot, emotions that aren't his jumbled together like some fucked up concoction of Raine's. Impatience turns to panic turns to anger and he can feel them clash against the terrified realization that he's now driving Mithos, and Lloyd didn't want this, not at all, but the boy is in front of him and demanding answers and Lloyd feels so out of depth he feels his chest heave with the inability to breathe.

So he does what he can to keep composed against the onslaught of memory and emotion that threatens to pull him under their control, under violent and stormy waves of trauma and stress, and he allows his mana to chain his emotions down instead, keeping them far, far, far away from the moment and situation at hand. Immediately, his mind clears and he feels nothing, not even the emotion bleed from Mithos' end. It allows Lloyd to set his voice even, to calm his breathing and keep anything from showing through. Mithos can not know how Lloyd should feel about this.

"I'm Lloyd," he introduces himself, displaying his hands to show Mithos he's not a threat, as logic dictates that at least giving Mithos names may help keep him from starting a fight he doesn't want to have happen, "and this is Sheena. I didn't mean to resonate with you. Kratos asked me to watch out for your crystal while he was in town, and you can resonate back with him as soon as he returns."

Okay, answers, he's getting answers, he wanted answers, but.

Did she say Anna? Like, Kratos' Anna. Annoying human Anna. The Anna he tried to kill, Anna. Since the fuck when was she alive?! And here? Shit. He should probably be happy about that, actually, because he'd kind of regretted it, regretted how much her absence had stolen the life from Kratos again, but-- is he a horrible person for kind of wishing she was still dead? Shit shit shit, don't think about that, Mithos, don't let it grace the emotion bleed.

"Yeah, I guess I can just resonate with Kratos when he shows up, that's fine," Mithos says all sharp and bitter, with half a mind to hunt Kratos down now except actually Kratos had good reason to not take Mithos into town, Mithos does not want to be around that many humans, he does not want them to know he exists in such close proximity to them. "It'll probably take me another three days to reconfigure everything, but that's fine, that's fucking fine."

Mithos hates this.

Even with the cover provided by the trees, by this point Mithos' hair is wet enough it's starting to get plastered to his face, and he hates that, too.

And then the emotion bleed stops, and he forgets about being angry entirely. He rounds on LLoyd, face painted with surprise and sharp curiosity.

"How did you do that," he demands. "How did you-- only Father's ever-- The emotion bleed shouldn't just stop like that." He takes one step closer to Lloyd, peering, trying to study an answer out of Lloyd's face, out of the ether gathered around him. Hard to say if it's a trick to the ether or not. "How is it-- it's not stifled, I'm just getting nothing from you!"

Following the source of that ether pull, Zelos runs through the short distance between himself and his driver, rapidly pinging her with his concern and getting back flashes of dread. An idea of what the fuck just went down here is already formulating itself in Zelos' mind, one that he desperately hopes is and isn't true, his conflicting emotions much more difficult to discern as Sheena's shock bounces in their link.

And when he gets back to camp, when he takes in the bright boy bathed in blue light from a few days ago in that hill, Zelos' own shock crashes with Sheena's and stops him in his tracks.

Lloyd and Sheena stand in front of an agitated Mithos, his shouts loud even in the cacophony of the rain. It makes Zelos shudder. Violet eyes scan scene, widening. The newly awakened Aegis--this real Aegis--stands as tall and proud as a boy like him can, all gathered ether and threats, all power aching for release resonating with the ambient ether and with the one circulating through Zelos' veins. For all the power it holds, though, Zelos feels nothing else pulling within or contaminating his resonance with Sheena, so the idea of his driver gaining a new blade is quickly crossed off the list. But the only remaining human here is...

Oh. Oh no.

Oh, Lloyd. What the fuck have you done?

"Hey there, fellow Aegis," Zelos calls out, hands held up in a peace gesture, expression as flat as he can possibly keep it. He then breaks it with a smirk, something playful to dissipate this dreadful tension in the air. "You chose some bad weather to wake up in, but. Good morning."

Edited 2019-08-21 16:53 (UTC)

Taking a step back as Mithos rounds on him, Lloyd mentally curses the fucking emotional bleed and everything it stands for, already feeling invaded in several ways, including the fact that the reflection of the uncle he murdered is currently getting in his face about his emotional blockage. Lloyd keeps his face blank, thankful for the fact that it's not hard to do with said block in place, as his mind races to find a way to answer Mithos' questions - demands, really - without giving away too much information. It's fine. Lloyd just has to deal with this until Kratos gets back, and then hopefully Mithos will resonate with him and forget about Lloyd.

Something escapes Mithos and spikes Lloyd's awareness, though. "How did you-- only Father's ever-" The Aegis says, and Lloyd pieces together from the mythos - hah - he's heard so far that Mithos' father must be the Architect. It's not surprising that this world's Origin can control his own emotional input, but. It's quite weird to hear that he shares a power with the Architect, as it stands.

Whatever. It doesn't matter right now. What does matter is that Mithos is expecting an answer and Lloyd doesn't have an excuse not to answer, even though he knows Sheena will kick his ass later for relying on his mana blocks as he is. So Lloyd opens his mouth, hesitates, and prepares to answer at least part of Mithos' inquisitions with half-truths.

And then Zelos shows up, and the relief Lloyd can't really feel is logically palpable enough that he knows it'd be there if he could feel it. Grasping onto Zelos' sudden appearance as a distraction, he places a smile on his face and waves at him. "Hey, Zelos! Brought an umbrella with you, by chance?"

Even if he can't feel any of Lloyd's emotions, Mithos can see Lloyd hesitate, try and get out of giving an answer, and maybe it shouldn't matter, maybe he shouldn't fucking care about the human that's driving him, but--

Zelos interjects, and Mithos almost hates him for it. That's-- That's not fair, though. Bastard Aegis or not, Zelos is an Aegis, and Mithos supposes the least he can do is be polite to Zelos if no one else. He takes a shaky, inperceptible breath through his nose to steady himself. They're complaining about the weather. The weather, as if that's the most important thing here! Mithos wants to say something sharp and biting, wants to draw all attention back to himself, but you know what? They're right. Fuck the rain, actually.

Huffing, he pushes wet hair out of his face. "Don't need one," he says to Lloyd. "Clearly, none of you know what an Aegis is."

Mithos raises two fingers to the sky, arm straight above his head. Inhale. Exhale. Find his connection to the core of this planet, to reality around them. He draws one small circle in the air, and then a second circle, slightly larger. He pauses here, just to be certain his calculations are correct, but it takes only a millisecond to double check them. Calculations complete, he drags his arm down in an arc, back to his side.

And just like that, the rain stops.

There's a perfect circle around them, about ten metres, where the sky is suddenly blue and the sun is shining. Outside of the circle, it is still raining.

He gives them a moment to take that in, a moment which he spends drying his hair by amplifying sunlight between his fingers, and running his hand through wet strands until they are no longer wet, which only takes a few sweeps.

"There," he says, then turns to Zelos. "You could have done that too, you know."

Zelos's concern cuts through the mess of what she's feeling, leaving her a little more space to think. She manages a little bit of reassurance - something even vaguer than usual, still dwarfed by the sea of otherwise negative emotion - but by that point he's within sight anyway.

So of course Mithos picks that moment to start interrogating Lloyd about the emotional link. Sheena winces at the realization of what he must have just done, kind of wants to step between Lloyd and Mithos, but that might just make things worse. Instead, she places a hand on his shoulder, a little comfortingly, a little protectively. She can't blame him for it - not when he's just resonated with Mithos - but she still hates the fact that he's had to resort to locking his emotions away wholesale. She should've realized what it was he was sensing quicker.

Either way, before she can beat herself up about it, Zelos is here, distracting Mithos, and she's never been more grateful for it. She shoots him a quick smile for it, before Mithos speaks again, and--

Sheena tenses as he he traces out a pattern in the air around him, but his actual plans are. Well. That's pretty impressive. It's one thing to know that Aegises hold enough power to rival the summon spirits' and another to see Mithos use it so casually and so dramatically.

'Clearly, none of you know what an Aegis is,' Mithos says, right before he raises his hand to the sky and manipulates the ether around all five of them to create a large enough shield to protect them from the rain. The shock at the sight, at the power emanating from the shield, bounces off the walls of Zelos' core crystal and reverberates through his veins, his bones, sinking his pride and shackling it at the bottom of his soul.

Mithos even goes the extra mile after that, using even more ether to dry his own hair while everyone else's remains wet with rainfall. Subconsciously, the mortification and shame that peel off the bouncing shock in Zelos' chest adhere themselves to his core, and the ether around the bastard Aegis warms considerably as his cheeks burn. Because, clearly, Zelos doesn't know what an Aegis is if he has to be told about all this stuff, either. And who says he can even do it anyway? He's an artificial. A replacement. It's not like humans ever actually managed to replicate divine power with their very own hands, or else everything would've been much, much more different.

He wasn't even supposed to exist in the first place.

Abruptly cutting off the emotional bleed, Zelos offers Mithos a grin, laughs, tilts his head from side to side as he raises both hands in a calculated shrug that's supposed to read as lazy and unbothered. His face is softened, his stance friendly, and his voice lowers to something slightly tired and playful. It's a disguise where there would only be a mask, something that guards a wounded ego and stands in place of an identity that evaporates as some drops of rain dry off Zelos' shoulders.

"Sorry, man. I guess I was just too distracted by your awakening to think too much on it," comes the half lie, half truth spilling from smiling lips. "An Aegis awakening is kind of top priority. You know how it is."

Edited 2019-08-25 21:13 (UTC)

"Sure," Mithos says to Zelos, but he's somewhat wary. He knows masks, he knows lies, he knows how to people please as well as anyone else. You don't survive, if you're an Aegis, and humanity hates you-- and knowing how to butter them up is just as useful as making sure they know that you can cut them down with the slightest effort.

And he knows-- the bastard Aegises, the artificials created by human hands. They've been held in human hands for a long time, haven't they? Humanity has been using them for threats and persuasion, but they've never let the artificials do anything, they've never...

Oh.

That's it, huh?

"You have... no idea, do you?" Mithos asks, his tone much gentler than it had been before. The edges of it are still sharp, and he laughs a tight little tired laugh as he turns away from Lloyd and steps towards Zelos. "There's no way they would have told you, would have let you discover what you're capable of, because humans only care about our power when it's useful to them." He smiles, off-kilter, the smile of a boy well used to righteous fury and at the end of his patience for those testing it. "They make me sick, humans do. Just imagine how much they've held you back."

Edited 2019-08-25 22:48 (UTC)

Mithos stepping towards him already throws Zelos off, and he instinctively takes a step back as the other Aegis approaches him. But that gentle tone, that laugh, the things he's saying--they're like little nails digging into Zelos' skin, tensing him, hurting him, freezing the warmth on his cheeks as he goes pale.

And after that fear settles in, that's when the ashamed anger rises in its wake.

Because how dare Mithos speak to him like that. How dare he put Zelos in the spotlight, how dare he point out all the ways that they're different, the ways that he's mediocre in the presence of a real, full-fledged Aegis like Mithos is. Even if, at the center of it all, Mithos is right--it's the humans' fault he's this way, underdeveloped, outshined by the naturally divine. His anger is misdirected and through it Zelos' expression finally breaks into a glare, his hands clenching into fists to his sides as Mithos talks, and talks, and talks and talks, backing Zelos into a literal and metaphorical corner until something snaps and he finally digs his heels in and pushes back.

A growl, low in his throat. "No one's held me back," Zelos spits, his voice much stronger and more stable than he'd thought possible given the mess of emotions raging in his core. It is still a whisper, though, a private exchange between Aegises as he glares at the boy that's pried so deeply into Zelos' thoughts without a fucking care in the world. "I am what I am. I do not change."

That's rich. Mithos chuckles to himself, not paying much mind to Zelos' anger. Mithos is right, and that's not going to change regardless of how much Zelos protests about it, so he can go on protesting if he likes.

Mithos really wishes Zelos wouldn't discredit his own power, though.

"You are what humans made you," Mithos tells him, gentle, his voice soft if not necessarily quiet. "But that's not your fault. And now that you're free, nothing's stopping you from finding out what you really are."

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WET RAT WET RAT WET RAT

WET RAT WET RAT WET RAT

WET RAT BUT https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2P5qbcRAXVk

HERE WE GO

(mithos voice) LET ME OUT, LET ME OUUUUUUUU

I'M AFRAID

SO AM I THIS IS GONNA BE GOOD

SO MUCH FOR ANYONE HAVING A GOOD DAY

i should just change the post title to "everything is fucked"

lloyd's having A Time

WELL SO IS MITHOS, NOW

Comes in a thousand years late w Derris Kharbucks

can i get a mocha frappe

UNIONIZE!! BOYCOTT DERRIS KHARBUCKS!!! YOU FUCKS

Derris Kharbucks is better than Cruxis Cronuts at least

BLADES UNIONIZE!!!!!!!!!!!

FUCK THE HUMANS!!!!! BLADE RIGHTS!!!!

BLADE RIGHTS!!!!!!! BLADE RIGHTS!!!!!!!!!

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