week 4

[airlockedmods]

[Just like the previous week the status quo is restored with frighteningly quick efficiency. PAL still makes the morning and night time announcements through the PIP on each Champion's arm, and still the Champion unitards are freshly laundered and re-hung each morning in their closets. Even the glass roses Choromatsu and Takumi broke after the trial in their fit of anger have been replaced with fresh ones. All signs that there was anything amiss this weekend are completely gone.

There's a new floor to explore, their "reward" for a job well done.]

Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday



[ooc: Don't forget to to turn in your AC for week 3, submit your memory regains and put in your threads for the Benefactors!]

Comments

[misanthropicprinciple]

[Wow. Junpei has officially met a liar worse than he is. The anger flares up, but only a tiny lick of the earlier flame--not enough to offset the concerned certainty that's been growing in him for the past three weeks.]

Ardyn. Have you considered... that if it's not something you can handle at full capacity, then maybe it's not something that should rest solely on you to handle?

[scourgingstars]

...

[It was strange, how they'd cycled back to this weeks later and only now was Ardyn actually able to grasp why Junpei had been upset about the Crystal's prophecy. As much as he did love what he had been doing and it did genuinely make him happy to know he was saving others...hadn't it been exhausting, spending so much time away from Insomnia? Traveling almost constantly, no matter how welcomed he had been everywhere that traveling brought him?]

[...and despite even that, hadn't he always been alone in what he was truly doing? That was what Church had pointed out, that Ardyn had barely even understood something as ordinary as friendship because he had been the savior and king before all else.]

[And if this--whatever this was, whatever Ardyn Izunia was should have been the end result, was it that the savior hadn't been strong enough to deal with the problem or that he'd dealt with it entirely alone?]

I-

[But if he called it a mistake even for an instant then he cast aside the gratitude of all the lives he'd saved. If he dared regret what he'd done to himself in the name of protecting others, that was the same as wishing they'd never been saved at all.]

[Ardyn Izunia could clearly do that. But Ardyn Lucis Caelum, who faltered and ran his right hand through his hair, did not have the capacity to accept that.]

It's just...how things have to be, Junpei. It's too late to change now--it's likely been too late for centuries.

[misanthropicprinciple]

Bullshit. It's never too late to change something.

[The answer comes so quickly and so forcefully, it could almost be that unnatural fury again; but that's not an angry look on Junpei's face. Just irritated, maybe bull-headed--and very, very certain. Not the happy certainty of platitude, but the grim "yeah, I went toe-to-toe with some fuckin' Reavers, you want to tell me again they're not real?" sureness of experience.]

Nine years or nine centuries, Ardyn. You can take my word for that.

[scourgingstars]

[Gods, he wished he could believe that.]

I don't think it that simple, Junpei.

[misanthropicprinciple]

I didn't say it was simple. I said it's never too late.

[scourgingstars]

[lunafreya would disagree were she not, you know, dead]

Regardless, the point remains that you shouldn't be the one to deal with this. None of you should.

[misanthropicprinciple]

[Then obviously, as a corpse, she is wrong by default! Ha! Three points for Junpei.]

I have issues dealing with shoulds. I'm more of an is person. And since I am dealing with the problem, I think I can, as a reasonable damn adult sound of mind and body, decide to continue to deal with the problem as I see fit.

[You gonna take his decision from him like Akane, Ardyn? Huh?? You wanna GO???]

[scourgingstars]

[wow, junpei]

...I'd like it if you were right. [Ardyn smiled, forlorn and tired.] I doubt that's the case, but I would like to be proven wrong.

[misanthropicprinciple]

Then I will! That's what I do.

[Here's the Champion Challenger, boys and girls, displaying all the emotional maturity of a twelve-year-old.]

So fuck your smug, self-sacrificing asshole. If I have to kick your ass to save it, I will.