week 2

[airlockedmods]

Week 2

[It's been about a week since the Champions woke up in their new consumerist hellscape of a temporary home and, despite a few odd goings on and the bomb incident with Church and Nari, things haven't been as bad as they could be. No one is even dead yet! But let's see how long that lasts.

Enjoy your week, Champions.]

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(( Also, don't forget to submit your AC and item rolls! You can also bother your Overseer here. ))

Comments

[motherfucking_ghost]

What do you mean what do I mean?

[burninglight]

I don't understand what you're talking about. Of course it was me, I'm the one who brought our entire world to ruin. Are you really missing the point so soundly as to assume otherwise?

[motherfucking_ghost]

Yeah, it was you physically, but you've made it a point that you're not the same. You have feelings and care, and you have impulses that you listen to whether you like it or not that you didn't have when you were immortal and plague-ridden. And, fuck, you just said it was sentient, so obviously it was controlling you.

[burninglight]

[Ardyn blinked at Church like he'd just abruptly grown three extra heads--or like he'd said something no one had ever bothered to so much as think in two thousand years.]

[motherfucking_ghost]

...Am I wrong?

[burninglight]

I-I...I'm not...sure. I've never thought about it like that.

[motherfucking_ghost]

You said it was sentient. It's not just a disease. You were a different man as a--healer. You took the plague, the plague that turned you immortal and twisted you into hating everyone, and then you called it sentient, and now here you are, without it, mortal, with impulses to care and to heal, that you haven't had for two thousand years--

So no. It wasn't you. It was the thing inside you.

...And the hell does your brother have to do with all this anyway?

[burninglight]

[Ardyn couldn't quite come up with a response to that--now that he thought it over, he really didn't know where he stopped and the Accursed began. He was just 'Ardyn Izunia', the man of no consequence; until now he'd never been entirely sane enough to think that perhaps it was more complex than that.]

[Instead, he focused on the other question, hesitant as he was to answer.]

I was healing the plague, and it was I who was to be leader of the newly established kingdom bearing our name. I can't quite remember the specific details of it all after so long, but I remember that I...was becoming something inhuman. My blood ran black, I neither slept nor ate, I became quicker and quicker to anger and began to drift from feeling the happiness I once did in healing the afflicted.

[Gold eyes turned distant, his voice drifting into something vague and distracted.]

...I remember the very subjects of the Lucian kingdom turning on me. Fearing me as though I were never their savior, but one of the very daemons which the plague spawned. My brother...

My brother pretended to be me. He took my name, acted as though he were savior of the world and future king. He had me executed, and then when I proved something undying he did it again. And again. And again.

Izunia Lucis Caelum stole everything from me. So I destroyed the world that allowed him to do it.

[motherfucking_ghost]

...Wow. What a dick. He could've at least used his own na--how did nobody know he wasn't you?

[p r i o r i t i e s]

[burninglight]

...

[Ardyn didn't answer at first, starting to turn pale. His voice faltered, and when a reply came it was unusually quiet.]

We were twins.

[motherfucking_ghost]

Oh.

[He doesn't argue--doesn't become enraged because a sibling doesn't turn on their brother like that. Doesn't suggest that twins should be even closer. It sucks to turn on family. But it's not unheard of.

Agent South Dakota and her brother North were merely another kind of experiment.

Family didn't mean much in the face of war. In the face of annihilation. In the face of...petty stupid experiments. With Ardyn a monster unfit to rule, why not let the brother take over and bask in the glory?]

He didn't...have to take your name.

[burninglight]

...I suppose he must have been jealous. But in the end, it...it doesn't matter. He's been dead for two millennia now.

[motherfucking_ghost]

It's gotta matter to you.

Evil you tried to kill a world because of him.

[burninglight]

...

I think that...it hurts, being thrown aside so carelessly by gods and mortals alike. It hurt and I had no capacity to do anything but hurt everyone in return.

[motherfucking_ghost]

You didn't have a choice, did you? Like, you were trying to help people, how were you supposed to know you'd get infected? And once you were, what then? You've already got it, so unless someone else has the skills to heal you up... And then once it's got hold of you? All you felt was hate and anger, and it lashed out. It took your own pain and used it.

[burninglight]

I should have listened when Gilgamesh told me to stop. I...I should have done anything other than keep going just to save a world of selfish humans.

[motherfucking_ghost]

Did you think they were selfish and unworthy at the time?

[burninglight]

...no. But what does that matter? All that means is that I was stupid and gullible enough to think better of them.

[motherfucking_ghost]

Okay. Okay. Here's the thing. You were a monster by then? Like, I've got that right, right?

So...they were supposed to, what, give you a big hug while you reinfect them and kill them?

[burninglight]

I think there’s sure to be some acceptable middle ground between that and ‘throw aside our savior like trash while calling for blood’.

[motherfucking_ghost]

I guess it's possible to live with an incarnation of maniacal evil...Doc did it for a while, even though it was like an annoying split personality. And they did make a bunch of evil robot clones. But they all sucked...

[burninglight]

I suspect we're deviating somewhat from the point, Church.

[motherfucking_ghost]

You've never met Omega and face the possibility of him taking over your ex-girlfriend to enslave and alien race and then conquer the known universe.

[burninglight]

And you've never seen the true incarnation of the Starscourge. Call it even.

[motherfucking_ghost]

...What was the point, again, that we were deviating from?