theairlock | week 4

Entry tags:

!round 2,
!week 4

week 4

[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!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

What's the position for egging you on to do stupid things? I want that one.

That's usually my own job, actually.

I think you'll find I'm more qualified.

You're practically a master of it.

[The faint smile fades.]

Speaking of bad decisions, though... there is one we wanted to talk to you about. If you're sufficiently rehydrated.

Yes, of course.

[His head still felt like the Archaean's personal punching bag, but Ardyn straightened up and pushed his hair out of his face.]

Is there something wrong, Junpei?

Uh.

[Church is super good at dramatic entrances, lemmie tell ya. He pokes his head in, using Junpei's spidey-senses obviously to know he's needed.]

Sup. Hey. Cool. You're not dead. Glad for that. Heyyyyy can we talk? Can we--can we do the talking thing, now-ish?

[He sure is hellish amounts more nervous than he was this morning, huh!]

That is what I was kinda insinuating the three of us do, Church.

[Waaaat da fuck.]

Are you... okay...?

...Of course we can, Church. [Ardyn stood up, looking more genuinely concerned than mostly dead.]

What's going on with you two?

Nothing! Something. We just need to talk to you, mano y mano...y mano. [church] Back in our room might be a good idea. [vamanos?]

Shitsurei shimasu.

[Vamanos.]

[i don't speak spanish, lopez]

[Once they had gotten back to the room, Ardyn shut the door behind him and turned to face the other two in clear confusion.]

What's wrong? Has something happened?

[He shares a look with Junpei, and, welp. Here goes something.

He jerks a thumb at Junpei in all his Izunia-fied glory.]

He's infected with the Starscourge, isn't he.

[Implication: you are infected with the Starscourge.]

[Just casually leans against the door so Ardyn can't open it again.]

Is it the Starscourge or just Starscourge, no article? Unclear.

[And that was how Ardyn turned white as a sheet and looked like he wanted to warp clear through the door and out into space rather than have this conversation.]

I-...it's-

[Damn it. He'd known what this affliction was ever since he'd caught sight of an ashen pale reflection lined with corruption...no, possibly since Mai's demon had scratched his ankle.]

[...Ardyn's blood had been black, and ever since then he suspected what Church and Junpei had now caught on to.]

'Infected' isn't...the right word for this situation. If he were actually sick, we would all know it. He doesn't show most of the ordinary symptoms, and what is there would have progressed to something worse by now.

[Then he paused, glancing away in an attempt to collect himself before looking back to Church and Junpei.]

There's really no point in trying to hide it anymore, is there?

If I were truly afflicted, every single person here would be daemons by now. Myself included.

Maybe PAL's holding it back. [It's a suggestion he makes more in the direction of the floor than at Ardyn.] Whatever the case, it's related, right?

If it's not an infection, then I think it's because you healed people.

[Junpei's not avoiding eye contact, but he's got one arm wrapped around himself, the other supporting his elbow.]

I remembered last night. You said that your powers let you remove the plague before it turns people--remove, but not cure it. Right? So, with nowhere else to go...

[After a beat, he breathes out.]

I should have put it together sooner. I thought it was weird at the time.

I--that's...

[It seemed for a moment that Ardyn had forgotten how to breathe, taking half a step back almost like he felt cornered by an oncoming fight. For a moment he struggled to find a way out of this, fumbling for the right words....and then the resistance simply dropped out of him, Ardyn's legs giving way in favor of sitting on the edge of the nearest bed with a resigned sigh.]

I can't use traditional white magic. Simply healing wounds and afflictions through magic is not something I'm capable of.

[The single greatest secret of the savior king, kept for a lifetime and yet decoded in a matter of weeks.]

My power is...transferral. Every scar on my body is that of a Lucian life spared, every single ounce of the scourge an afflicted soul brought back from the edge of an eternal night.

I'm not truly infected; if I were I would be long since dead. What I think I became is...the bearer of that I wished to save others from.

[His head snaps back up, clearly not expecting that. Jesus lucian christ what the fuck more is there to this? He's hesitant, because he doesn't...know, he doesn't know if Ardyn wants the comfort, but he comes over to sit beside him with a heavy sigh, fluttering some of the hair dangling in his face.]

I thought all those scars were from...fights. From your fights with daemons, before we figured it out. [He maybe maybe maybe should apologize for the pool. He won't, though. Because he doesn't really regret it. Because at the end of the day, nobody gave a shit about his scars or gave him more than a double-take anyway.]

No wonder you think you're supposed to carry the weight of the world. Because you really...really are. You helped all those people, and then... [Vague hand motion. And then something. happened.]

[He holds his tongue. He bites his tongue. There is so much he wants to say about this, about transferal, about the wrong of innocents taking the wounds of others, and all of it is laced through red and black with his own anger.

That's not what Ardyn needs right now. That's not what they need right now. So Junpei grits his teeth, holding his fist before his mouth, and bears it long enough for the next thought.]

Are you supposed to, Ardyn? If white magic is a thing that exists, and you don't have it... is it actually on you to do this?

[With great power comes great responsibility. But Spider-man only does what a spider can.]

It has to be. It-...I'm--

[He faltered again after that first sharp insistence, a very real and very human uncertainty snaking its way into his words.]

...I was chosen by the Crystal. [His right hand brought in close to his chest, Ardyn reminding himself that replica or no, the Ring of the Lucii was still on his finger.] The king foretold in the prophecy, to banish the night and save the world. No one else had this power. Even true healing magic-...a simple Cure or potion couldn't take the plague off the shoulders of the people. So of course I was doing what I was meant to do--saving the innocent and forestalling the night until it could be banished completely!

[He wasn't wrong. Ardyn kept telling himself that, over and over and over in his mind. The gratitude of those he saved, the elation when he told them that yes, of course he could help relieve that pain--he refused to betray any of that and say 'I made a mistake'.]

[But even so, said a dark corner of his mind, was the price to be paid worth the result?]

I was...accomplishing what everyone needed. Gods and mortals alike--I was saving the world--!

Ardyn. There's--I think there's something--there's a difference in what you're saying. There's two concepts here, and I don't--

[He wants to protect Ardyn from himself, but...]

You were forestalling the night. Until it could be banished. But if you were the one to banish it...why forestall it then? What were you supposed to do, heal every single person until all you had left in you was--this? What banishes it?

...Something about the Crystal. The ring--that's a conduit for the line of kings. But to wield the Crystal's power as a whole...

[He's sure he's on the right track. But he doesn't understand enough about Ardyn's world, and he... he wants to help Ardyn. With the Scourge sitting pretty in his head, Junpei knows he doesn't have the empathy to keep from kicking him in the metaphorical face if he keeps climbing blindly after the truth.]

I-...I just wasn't strong enough yet. That must have been it. I just needed to stall for time until I...until I knew how to rid the world of it completely...

[Ardyn trailed off, looking to the ring on his hand and then staring very distantly at the floor.]

But I'm not...the Chosen King. Not anymore. In that last memory, of a world two thousand years ahead of all I once knew, there was another. So I must have failed. Everything the people of Lucis believed I was, everything I dedicated my life to, everything I turned myself into--Ardyn Izunia betrayed all of it, and now it falls to the one hundredth and fourteenth king...Noctis Lucis Caelum now has to bear whatever must come next.

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