Ramen
Administrator

PL: 217,000
Akuma no Gisei (x16T) Soul Mastery (x24P)
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Post by Ramen on Nov 12, 2019 16:35:11 GMT -6
LIGHTING THE WAY| Ramen's PL: 175,000 |
The Lookout still provoked mixed feelings in Ramen. On the one hand, it was the site of her first, most desperate battle -- and the place where her power ran rampant and nearly led to her seriously hurting a friend, and a couple of allies. But it was also a site of great significant in the martial art's world, a place that had been storied for centuries -- probably longer than that. Shrouded in mystery, at least before its attack at the hands of a handful of wrongdoers announced its presence over the airwaves. Just as she had once come here in the pursuit of power, aiming to feed upon her negative emotions to fuel her most potent form, she now came in search of something similar. If the beings that resided here really were as all-knowing and all-powerful as their lofty titles would suggest, then they would be in the best position to offer her help now.
At least, if they were willing.
She touched down on the sleek tiles just outside of the main building on the top floor. She recalled that there was a great deal hidden beneath, but to her knowledge their was only a single way in or out. There, she stood for several seconds. She contemplated raising her energy, but a repeat of the storm that shrouded the tower might draw the wrong reaction. So, she cleared her throat and just shouted at the top of her lungs.
"HEY!" she boomed. Despite her small size, she was certainly capable of making a ruckus. "I NEED TO TALK TO GOD! AND I'M IN KIND OF A RUSH!"
She settled there, arms crossed over her chest. The bit about being in a rush was not, strictly speaking, the truth. But being a little more demanding might be the best way to speed the whole process up a touch. It took long enough to get anything done at city hall: this was basically the planet's city hall, and she didn't intend to take a number.
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Post by Chime on Nov 13, 2019 0:31:25 GMT -6
Chime's PL: 100 (Suppressed from 112k)
Another day, another unannounced visit to the Lookout. Chime put down the book he'd been reading and sighed. It was someone very powerful, and very impatient. The wisest thing to do would be to go upstairs and attend to them before they got irritated and started blowing holes in the place. That's what would be wise. Instead, Chime settled back in with his book 'The Prime, the Demonic and the Other: Theories on the Planes', and reached out telepathically to the person on the Lookout above.
"The Kami is busy, please hold."
Then, he began to hum.
He continued to mentally hum waiting music at his visitor while he finished the chapter of his book leisurely. Whoever was up there wasn't wounded, he could tell that much from their energy. If it was truly an emergency, they could just tell him over the elevator music. If it wasn't, and they were just bothering him for personal reasons, he'd keep on reading and humming louder. Eventually he'd finish, snap his book shut, stop his annoying hold music, and finally make his way upstairs.
Once he was in the doorway and saw who it was, he stopped short. They'd only met a couple of times, and both were intense and stressful for different reasons. He didn't know her energy signature or voice well enough to recognize her from that alone.
"...Oh, Ramen. It's been a while."
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Ramen
Administrator

PL: 217,000
Akuma no Gisei (x16T) Soul Mastery (x24P)
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Post by Ramen on Nov 16, 2019 12:43:03 GMT -6
LIGHTING THE WAY| Ramen's PL: 175,000 |
Ramen was just experienced enough with telepathy, mostly from being on the receiving end from people like Tarch, to know when she was being toyed with. It wasn't a fun experience, but she took in a sharp breath and bit her tongue for the time being. She may not have liked it, but this was the Guardian's home, and him being a little short with her was probably justified. She was pretty loud. So, while he took his sweet time in arriving, she merely stood in the center of the Lookout with her arms crossed, tapping her foot impatiently.
When he did emerge through the doorway, she shot him a rather unimpressed look. "It has been a while," she replied, forcing some of the annoyance out of her tone. "The last time would've been when we threw that crazed Arcosian off of the tower, right? ... He hasn't come back, has he? I know you guys tend to attract a lot of negative attention up here."
She clicked her heel against the stone tile beneath her. "Little wonder, honestly," she mumbled. "I know this place is secret and hard to find and everything, but when you make a giant tower that stretches past the clouds, you've got'ta imagine people are gon'na want to topple it. It's like kids with sandcastles. Whoever makes the biggest one is gon'na get it stomped through."
She winced a little at the thought. She and Mollusc had helped some small Doragon girl rebuild the Lookout once before, and she could only assume that Chime himself had to do the same thing once or twice as well. Maybe the sandcastle analogy was a little close to the mark. Either way, she started towards him at a casual pace.
"Yeah, so... I came here 'cause I was looking for a bit of information on a magical...sort of thing."
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Post by Chime on Nov 18, 2019 1:13:05 GMT -6
Chime stood with his hands folded behind his back as he listened to Ramen. She wasn't here for another fight, it seemed. That was good. When she started talking about the past, he glanced aside off into the sky. He remembered the day she was talking about very well, for many reasons, and none of them were positive. "...We do tend to, yes. But we manage to come out in one piece in the end." That wasn't entirely true, sometimes they didn't come back at all, but he didn't want to go into that now, "That arcosian never came back. ...I'm almost certain he died. He was in a bad state when he ran off, and I couldn't chase him, there were...other things." He shook his head.
Her sandcastle analogy was...apt, he supposed? Chime had never really thought of it that way. He shrugged, "Maybe. We never intended it as a taunt, we didn't even make this place. Maybe a secluded little temple in the mountains would be safer, but there's too much of importance here just to abandon it. We could move everything out of it, I guess, but..." He made an uncertain face, "There's too much. There's still things here I haven't explored.
He waved a dismissive hand in the air. The inner workings of the mysterious Lookout weren't important right now. "A magical thing? You'll have to be more specific than that. 'Magical' describes half the things up here." Chime peered up at Ramen with some curiosity as she got closer. What was she after that she had to come here for? The two of them weren't friends. The only reason they weren't outright enemies was because of her help against Monster and Hale. So whatever she was looking for, she must believe her best or only chance to learn of it was up here.
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Ramen
Administrator

PL: 217,000
Akuma no Gisei (x16T) Soul Mastery (x24P)
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Post by Ramen on Nov 18, 2019 12:37:10 GMT -6
LIGHTING THE WAY| Ramen's PL: 175,000 |
"I'm not really suggesting you move your base of operations. I mean, this place is like a sacred spot and all that -- it'd be kind of a waste to just pick up and move. But still, you're kind of condemning yourselves to be a permanent target here." She hesitated a moment. "At least, ever since that snake demon broadcast your location on live television. That was probably the start of it."
There were probably other things that they could do to protect the Lookout. Finding some new way to hide it wouldn't be outside of the realm of possibility, given the extents of what some people seemed to be able to do with magic. A more substantial guard to force the fighting away from the surface of the Lookout itself might also work. But those were things the little Guardian would have to figure out for himself.
She glanced off to the side, taking a quick look around the Lookout to see if she could spot any remaining damage from those attacks -- or from anything more recent. "--Oh," she replied, almost as if it was an afterthought. "There are a lot of magical beings wandering around Earth these days. Majins, spellcasters, demons, that sort of thing. Most of them seem to be able to tap into some pretty terrifying powers."
"I suppose I'm mostly trying to find information on how they're doing it. How the Stargoons channel their powers, how those demons keep finding more and more powerful forms. That sort of thing. So, I guess a book. I don't really understand -- is magic just another form of ki? If it isn't, how come they're able to amplify their ki so much using it?'
She looked back to Chime with a rather dissatisfied expression. "Everyone knows how martial artists do it. But information on how magic works is so much rarer. It puts the rest of us at a disadvantage."
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Post by Chime on Nov 19, 2019 21:17:05 GMT -6
"Yeah, the broadcast. I'd heard about that." Chime rubbed the back of his neck. He'd never seen the broadcast himself, since it aired long before he'd ever arrived on Earth. He'd had people tell him about it, though. "I actually ran into the guy that did that once, but a bunch of ghosts interrupted our fight." He shrugged, "Nothing for it now, I guess."
Ramen's request was actually much simpler than he'd anticipated. She just wanted to know how magic worked. It was esoteric knowledge, especially someplace like Earth, but not something so dangerous that Chime was unwilling to explain it. There was a large gap between understanding the basics of magic and actually performing it, like the difference between understanding gravity and being a physicist.
"I could find you a book, or I could just tell you. Here," and Chime waves a hand. White sparkles fly from his hand and a simple chair noiselessly appears behind Ramen, "Sit, this could take a minute." Chime, however, did not sit. He paced back and forth and gestured as he spoke. Ramen seemed to have triggered some Teacher Mode in him.
"You weren't far off saying it's another kind of ki. Ki is the energy of a living thing, right? Even plants have a tiny amount, though they usually can't do anything with it. It's internal, a fire within yourself that you stoke as you get stronger." Chime conjured up a fiery orange light in his palm, "Magic, on the other hand, is external. Energy from without." He flung his hand up, scattering the orange light into many little particles that hovered in the air around him, "It's the energy that's always there, the background noise of the universe. Different people might conceptualize it differently, but I like to think of it as the world's ki, like the galaxy is a living organism itself, and we just borrow it's energy. Obviously, it's not a fire you can stoke like you can your own ki. You can't stoke the whole universe. So you need to work with it differently." He held his hand up again, and the particles of light were slowly drawn in to coalesce into a ball again. Chime closed his hand into a fist to snuff it out once they were all collected.
"Different planes have different magics, too. A shinjin could draw on the energy of Otherworld to get a different effect than me drawing on the energy of our world. Or a demon drawing power from the demon realm. That's what the Stargoons do, as far as I know. And..." He paused for emphasis before he continued, "That's what you've done, too, though I'm not sure you knew what you were doing at the time." Another pause. Chime's tone has gone from educational to serious, though not angry, "I kept your scroll. I've been wanting to talk to you about it, actually."
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Ramen
Administrator

PL: 217,000
Akuma no Gisei (x16T) Soul Mastery (x24P)
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Post by Ramen on Nov 26, 2019 20:56:38 GMT -6
LIGHTING THE WAY| Ramen's PL: 175,000 |
Ramen eyed the chair and moved to sit down, but when she noticed Chime remained standing, she hesitated. Although the seat had been offered to her, she recalled something her brother told her once. A warning about moments like this... missing out on the part where the chair was materialized by a god, at least. For the time, she merely stood and listened to the Namekian, nodding along every now and again to signal that she was indeed still paying attention.
It turned out that the explanation wasn't quite as complicated as she had thought. The idea of energy being internal and magic being external did help to illuminate something about their relationship to one another. Where she had learned to draw out her internal energy, and to both hone and grow it, magicians must then have had to learn how to manipulate external energy in growing amounts.
"So, both have hypothetical limits to them," she finally raised. "Your ki can only grow as strong as your body will allow, it's naturally capped at... well, however strong you can make yourself physically, right? However that works. I suppose if we're talking raw physical power, Saiyans and Arcosians are going to have a permanent advantage over the rest of us..."
She frowned at the thought, but soon cleared her throat to continue. "...and externally, your limit is what's around you. And your ability to command it. But there has to be a physical or mental aspect to that too, right? You can't just draw on all the magic in the solar system at once if you're not like, some kind of super-wizard."
She puzzled that briefly, but soon gave up on it. She wasn't in any position to start trying to work out any of this own her own. Not when it came to the practical function of magic. The subject of her scroll, however, was something she did feel a little more qualified on. "--Oh, that."
"What about it?"
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Post by Chime on Dec 3, 2019 7:25:09 GMT -6
Ramen seemed to understand the difference between magic and ki quite easily, which was good, because Chime didn't know how else to explain it. He noticed her hesitance and refusal to sit down, but didn't think much of it. Maybe she just preferred to stand, for whatever reason. It didn't phase him much.
"Arcosians and Saiyans might have us beat for raw power, true, but I think there's more too it than that. We've all got something that can give us an edge. My healing, for example. And I'm sure you've got your own skills, besides...you know. Blasting things." Chime paused as he remembered when the 'thing' she was blasting was him and his friends. Even if that was her only skill, it was a formidable one. He quickly blinked a few times to scatter the memories away, "And as for magic...there's still limits, yes. I find it less taxing to channel than ki, personally, but you still need to be able to handle the power you're putting out. And there's the mental aspect, like you said. You've got to be able to keep your runes or incantations and whatever else straight. You can't just...yell and harness your power."
Now came the difficult part. Ramen seemed remarkably casual when the topic of her scroll came up. Flippant, even. Though maybe she was like that with everything, Chime didn't know her well enough. He sighed before he continued, "Well...a lot about it. Everything. Where did you get it, and how? Did you know what sort of spell was in it? And why did you come here to read it?" He ran a hand over his bald head, "I studied it after you, uh. Left it here. It's demonic in nature, if you hadn't figured that out already." He paused for another moment to peer at Ramen closely, "Have you experienced side-effects after that incident? Did the power stick with you, or was that a one-off?"
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Ramen
Administrator

PL: 217,000
Akuma no Gisei (x16T) Soul Mastery (x24P)
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Post by Ramen on Dec 9, 2019 9:19:24 GMT -6
LIGHTING THE WAY| Ramen's PL: 190,000 |
"We all have things that can give us an edge, sure. For Earthlings, it tends to be training -- personal skill, techniques, tactics, all that sort of thing. And maybe that's enough to overcome raw strength sometimes. I was able to defeat Vocado long before I knew how to raise my power up as much as I can now--" she wrinkled her nose and crossed her arms. It was a point of pride to have pulled that win off, but there was a problem that kept coming back to her. She let out sharp huff before carrying on. "...But me being able to do that relied entirely on him being overconfident and reckless."
"If you were to take the raw power of a Saiyan and teach them to fight like an Earthling -- teaching them the fundamentals first and building from there, as martial artists firsts and warriors second, then they would probably have every advantage an Earthling could muster, plus their natural strength. It's just that they tend to be taught so strangely that they have any weakness at all."
She just shook her head. "Our edge comes from our upbringing, and that's not something we can keep to ourselves for forever."
There weren't many people that she could think of that fit that description as it stood. Ochra was probably the closest, having learned to fight without being able to rely upon the Oozaru. It was fortunate for her that fighters like Vocado and Kayen still seemed to rely more upon their natural strength than anything else... although she wasn't confident they would go much longer without learning by seeing.
When Chime turned back to the topic of the scroll, she lifted her shoulders in a lazy shrug. It was a little difficult to figure out how to put her acquisition of the scroll into words, without either frightening the Namekian, or just sounding a little unbalanced. "I had a... dream," she began, her tone a little more careful than her casual demeanor might suggest. "The details of how and why aren't really as important as the end result. I came to the Lookout with it because in order to unlock the power that was trapped in my body, aided by the scroll, I had to find a way to feed off of negative emotions."
She tapped her boot onto the stone tiles to draw Chime's attention to the Lookout proper. "This was the place where I first encountered those who would go on to identify themselves as the Stargoons. I felt helpless and I felt afraid, and after that, I felt angry and upset. I needed to remember that feeling so that I could overcome it. And I did."
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Post by Chime on Dec 18, 2019 21:38:00 GMT -6
Chime nodded along as Ramen continued on about the inherent strengths and weaknesses of people from different worlds. He didn't have much to add, since he thought she was right. His own people were a good example of it: Namekians of different castes were naturally better or worse at different things. Chime would never be as good a fighter as someone of the Warrior caste, and he was fine with that. It was just how things were. Knowledge and practice could only get someone so far.
What interested him far more was the story how she got the demonic scroll. The knowledge of it had apparently come to her in a dream. That immediately set him on edge. Was she merely drawn by the scoll's power...or had some other force slipped into her unconscious and led her to it? Ramen probably wouldn't know either way, so Chime didn't ask, merely peered at her with obvious suspicion as she continued.
"...So you decided to augment your lack of natural strength with magic." Chime crossed his arms as he came to this conclusion, "No offense, but it didn't look like you overcame anything, to me. It looked like you went berzerk on my front lawn until you wore yourself out." He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, "If you ever do something like that again, at least warn the people whose house you're going to have your inner battle of wills at, okay? We nearly died."
Chime paused for a good few seconds before he continued, debating whether he should tell Ramen what he was thinking. He had invented the Siphon Evil spell specifically with her in mind, so it seemed silly not to, but he was still hesitant. It wasn't a technique he wanted to flaunt too much, with how dangerous and unstable it was. He wasn't sure if he'd ever get a better opportunity to bring this up, though, so he went for it, "...Regardless of what happened, I kept the scroll, like I said. I studied it, and along with a lot of writings here in the Lookout, I...developed my own technique. A spell, really. It can target dark magic, evil intent...the sort of things your scroll was designed to awaken, as far as I could tell, and draw them out. Out. As in, away from the person entirely, and seal it." Chime gave Ramen a serious look, "I'll be honest, it's not the safest technique, but...if you ever wanted to go back to the way you were, I could do that for you."
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Ramen
Administrator

PL: 217,000
Akuma no Gisei (x16T) Soul Mastery (x24P)
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Post by Ramen on Dec 19, 2019 8:33:38 GMT -6
LIGHTING THE WAY| Ramen's PL: 190,000 |
"I didn't augment my strength with magic," Ramen felt a twitch of a annoyance as she started to correct him. It was an understandable enough misconception, but not one she was all too fond of having to explain away. Maybe her explanation wasn't the best, certainly she wasn't willing to give away the full story of how her power came to be -- not to someone she barely knew, at least. If her experiences with Mollusc were any indication, once Namekians decided something was wrong, they would cast aside all thought and reason to ensure that whatever they disapproved of was put to rest. "I used the scroll, and its magic, to unlock strength that I already had. Nothing was added to me that wasn't already there, I just couldn't access what was there."
Any hope of her becoming comfortable enough to explain the full extent of her power and its origins to the Namekian was washed away with the explanation of his technique. Her expression fell as he described it: targeting and drawing out dark magic was one thing, but evil intent was at the core of every person. Every Earthling, at least. Maybe it wouldn't actually be dehumanizing in practice, certainly it hadn't done so for the monster that had struck the Lookout last. But the intent was enough to raise a red flag. Purifying an opponent's intentions was in itself a sort of evil -- but an evil that clung to moral superiority.
"I don't need anything taken from me," she said, shortly. "I'm not governed by dark magic, and whatever evil intent I have is mine to keep. After all, I'm a fighter, not a hero -- violence isn't just part of it, it's the core of what I train myself to do. I'm not going to suddenly give up both my power and my personality." She matched Chime's serious look with one of her own. "Sorry, but being stripped down to being an average person would be worse than just dying."
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Post by Chime on Dec 27, 2019 0:02:57 GMT -6
Ramen's strength apparently hadn't been augmented as Chime had thought, at least not by her own perception. The power had been inside her all along, inaccessible, and the scroll had simply unlocked whatever barrier had held it back. This meeting had consisted of lots of peering back and forth and tense glances, but here was where Chime gave her the most suspicious, doubtful look of all. That strength supposedly hidden inside her wasn't like any Earthling's he'd ever seen. The closest comparison he could make was Nashi that one time, during the battle for the moon, but that was still different. There wasn't the darkness he had felt from Ramen on the Lookout, no loss of control. If the power had been unlocked by a demonic scroll, then it stood to reason that the power itself was demonic in origin as well.
"That begs the question of why that sort of strength was hidden within you in the first place," Chime told her, "It's not like any human I've met before. Are you cursed, maybe? No, there would probably be some outward sign of that...hm." He tilted his head, obviously studying her. With enough time and a little bit of magic, he was confident he could figure out exactly what the origin of Ramen's apparent demonic core was, but he wasn't about to ask her for that. She didn't seem to trust him enough to volunteer to be analyzed like a puzzle.
Chime held his hands up in a passive pose, "I'm not about to force you, don't worry. I've only ever used it in extreme circumstances, when killing the enemy wasn't an option. Like with the Monster, last time you were here. All I meant was if this new power was a problem, if it's gotten out of control like the first time, I could undo it. ...I'd like to think there's more to being a hero than violence, though, and the spell shouldn't take someone's fighting spirit away. Their desire to maim people, maybe, but..." He trailed off into a shrug. Her reaction had been more vehement than he expected, but he hadn't thought she'd readily agree, either. With a sigh, he folded his hands behind his back and stepped off to the side, looking out towards the artificial horizon of the Lookout's edge and not at Ramen.
"There is one more question I have for you, not related to the rest of this. At least, I don't think so. ...What happened when you were last on Arcose? I heard you met Mollusc there, and...another one of my friends." Chime turned his head to face her, but there wasn't anger there in his face, just a touch of sadness that he was doing his best to hold back. He'd heard the story from Mollusc, of course, but as good a friend as the ghostly Namekian was, Chime didn't really trust him to give unbiased, accurate information. Not that he trusted Ramen either, but between their two stories, he hoped to finally find the truth.
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Ramen
Administrator

PL: 217,000
Akuma no Gisei (x16T) Soul Mastery (x24P)
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Post by Ramen on Dec 27, 2019 0:21:18 GMT -6
LIGHTING THE WAY| Ramen's PL: 190,000 |
"The strength wasn't hidden away on purpose. It just happened to be there. I wouldn't worry too much about it, either way..." she shook her head, glancing off to the cloudless sky that made up the horizon. She still had no intention of explaining this out in full. Not to someone like him, at least -- someone she couldn't fully trust. She could take him if he tried something, sure. But he had more than enough friends to cause her trouble if he was the type to get too spooked by bloodlines.
The topic of Monster drew her attention back. That fight had been short and sweet, but even she was a little leery at just how violent the boy's transformation back into himself had been after the Namekian had woven his spell. But Monster was perhaps the one example she could get behind in the usage of that sort of ability. The idea of it being used on someone like Kayen, Vocado, or even Mumbo was more disturbing. Monster was a foreign entity running wild. But some people just had a little more evil in their hearts than the average.
"You can say there's more to being a hero than violence, but that's about all heroes know how to do. Most of them, at least. Some heroes seem to have good hearts to the point of just acting stupid, letting people walk free when they'll clearly come back to haunt them--" she waved a hand, idly. "But most of them are just taking the title for attention. Hell, some of them would probably leap at the opportunity to claim another kill to their name, as long as they thought they wouldn't get punished for it."
Ramen felt a flicker of annoyance at the Namekian's next question. She had to figure it was coming eventually, from someone on this planet. No doubt, Mollusc had taken the opportunity to leave as a chance to tell everyone who would listen all about how horrible she had become or... whatever he had been ranting about when he left that day. "I assume you mean the Pride Trooper," Ramen replied, meeting his gaze. She couldn't quite quell her annoyance long enough to hide it. "One thing led to another, and I had to kill him."
"I'm not going to apologize for it, either," she added. "It took one little incident to turn him from a beacon of moral justice or whatever to something hateful and vindictive."
She unclipped the scouter at her belt and tossed it over to Chime. If she recalled, the recording of the event was still somewhere in the archives of her scouter's data. There was a whole lot else there, too -- but she had labelled certain segments for ease of recalling. "You can see a bit of what happened there, if you care for a longer explanation. But I'm not going to get into it myself. I lost too many brain cells talking to Mollusc and the Pride Trooper to want to revisit it anytime soon."
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Post by Chime on Jan 2, 2020 21:45:59 GMT -6
Chime shook his head, "If someone's going around looking for excuses to kill people, they're not really a hero, no matter what they call themself. Most heroes don't run around announcing it, in my experience. If you're looking for recognition, then that's just a search for glory, not real altruism, right? ...But we're arguing semantics, at this point." He raised his arms in a shrug, "It's not really important. In the end, we can all only do what we feel is right."
What was important, at least to Chime, was Synthesia and Arcose. He sucked in a breath when Ramen confirmed what Mollusc had already told him a while ago: she had killed Synthesia. Chime tried to keep his expression neutral, but it was difficult. The way Ramen just admitted it so blatantly, without apology or any sign of remorse...and she kept just calling him the Pride Trooper...Chime's neutral mask quickly cracked, and his expression twisted into a frown. He laughed once, but there was no humor in it, "You don't even know his name, do you?" She'd killed him without even really knowing who he was.
The rest of her story was lining up with what Chime had heard though, as much as he hated it. Something had happened to Synthesia, apparently with his ruby, and twisted him into something dark and horrible. The scouter thrown his way was a surprise, and he fumbled a bit before he actually caught it. A recording? He hadn't been expecting that, he wasn't sure he was prepared to actually watch his friend die. But that had been the last thing Synthesia had told him, to find out what happened, and actually witnessing it for himself was the best way to do that. Chime gave Ramen a nod, then steeled himself to... Oh.
He realized in that moment he didn't actually know how to use a scouter. Well. He couldn't ask Ramen, that would be embarrassing in such a tense moment like this. It couldn't be that hard, right? The buttons on the side should do something--
"BAOSTREET'S BACK! ALRIGHT!!" Music suddenly blared from the scouter's one earphone and Chime scrambled to press buttons again and mute it. Okay, not that. Had Ramen noticed? Was it that loud? He didn't dare look up and check, he was already mortified. It took him a few minutes, the pace of a grandfather with a new computer, but eventually he found the video Ramen had meant. Scouter clipped awkwardly over his long ear and his opposite eye squinted shut, Chime started the playback.
There was Synthesia and Mollusc, both alive, along with a Saiyan Chime didn't recognize. He was awfully loud, whoever he was, yelling out all those attacks. Chime watched as they fought, and Ramen did actually offer a compromise...in exchange for the ruby. It almost worked too, if that damn shouting Saiyan hadn't interfered. The ruby shattered and Synthesia absorbed it, changing...and it didn't last long after that. There was more to the battle, but after he watched Synthesia fall, the rest didn't matter to him. He'd found what he'd been looking for.
Pulling the scouter from his face Chime looked down at it for minute. "...Thank you for the video, at least, if not for...the rest of it." He sighed, then stood himself up taller to toss the scouter back to Ramen, "I wish I'd been there. Maybe I could've fixed him somehow, or just stopped him from going altogether. ...That Saiyan, though. The one shouting a lot. I've never seen him before, who is he?"
"Oh, and one thing I don't understand...you said 'Banzo's murderers'? Synthesia could be, uh. Well, a bit of an ass, frankly, but I'd never known him to be a murderer. What was that all about?" Even after seeing the events with his own eyes (or rather, through Ramen's), Chime still felt like he was missing puzzle pieces.
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