EVENT #5: SOVEREIGN CITIZENS (GODSBLOOD)

[aionmods]

Sovereign Citizens

GODSBLOOD

At the height of the Sovereign's moon, Vaeka Lovenskol's execution is announced. Outside of the City Hall, a dignitary of Achamoth is flanked by an entourage of Kenoma, reading the words of Regent from an unfurled letter: Vaeka stands accused to conspiring against the Regent and abetting the fugitive menace known as the Pleroma. Though the details are not made public, rumors spread quickly, some far more wild than the actual truth. The full truth, after all, is something only the Regent's agents and the Pleroma themselves know, and even to them the manner of her exposure is unclear.

Though losing a proud daughter of an influential family, there seems to be little that the people of Godsblood can do besides accept it. After all, they are still a city of the Regent's empire, and for all the freedom they've enjoyed, there are limits. If she was truly aiding the Pleroma, the sworn enemies of the Regent - and in an organized manner, if the rumors are to be believed - can they truly object? Or would challenging the Regent's claim simply invite more death?

As with many things, the families of Godsblood are torn. Tensions are thick for the five days leading up to Vaeka's appointed execution by hanging, with everyone having an opinion and few wanting to go on record talking about it too loudly. As such, the people's frustrations come out in other ways. Bloodites are uncharacteristically unfriendly to strangers in this time, keeping to their own and treating everyone else with overt skepticism.

Those that have arrived as part of the Regent's official envoy, or seen guarding Vaeka, will receive a particularly icy reception. No longer are the Kenoma curious wanderers on personal business. Now, they are here as the hands of the Regent; few of the Godsblood citizens are foolish enough to challenge them outright, but they are ever an honest people.

Early on, the Kenoma and the rest of the Achamite contingent sent with them will be able to take over a jail in downtown Godsblood to hold Vaeka until her execution, clearing out all other Bloodite prisoners and employees in the meantime. This means they have a relatively secure position to guard their prisoner from, which is a good thing; after all, the Regent did outright invite the Pleroma to stop them, and Pleroma are nothing if not stubborn.

EXECUTION DAY

After five agonizing days of waiting and several high visible conflicts between the Pleroma and Kenoma, finally the hour of Vaeka's execution arrives. A gallows is set outside of City Hall, ready to welcome its newest victim, and a massive crowd has gathered in an spirit of anxious anticipation. Some worry that violence may break out in the streets, even without the Pleroma's agitation, but gradually the minutes tick by and the gallows remain empty.

First one minutes passes. Then five. Then fifteen. Slowly, it becomes clear to the people of Godsblood that Vaeka will not be arriving. Are the rumors true? Has she been saved? Have the Pleroma been successful, despite all odds?

As the hours pass and the crowds disperse, Vaeka Lovenskol is not officially reported as either living or dead. Fortunately, Godsblood is a place where information has a way of getting around, whether those in charge like it or not. Some are saying that she was seen being whisked away as if by powerful magic, following a bloody fight at the jail in which she was being held. Where did she go? Maybe her supposed connections to the forest people did her good, some surmise.

The days following Vaeka's failed execution carry a strange and uncertain energy. Where before there was tension and distrust, Godsblood now finds itself in a surreal reality where the Regent's word is apparently not absolute. Then again, do they really want a repeat performance?

QUESTIONS

What is the best way for Aions to travel to Godsblood?
For Pleroma, this is very easy, as they are likely to either already live there or be able to easy take Greentruth's portal. For Kenoma, they may come directly from Achamoth by boat as part of the Regent's envoy or arrive via Eustace's portal which is set up in a shed a fairly long jaunt outside of town. Once there has been some time to get established, Misa will be setting up another portal leading straight to the prison where Vaeka is being stored.

Are the Kenoma permitted by the Regent to kill other Godsblood citizens?
Though the Kenoma are authorized to kill any Bloodites that try to physically fight them, they are expected to keep things clean. The Regent prefers to only punish the guilty, and having the lines be clear will create less of a hassle in the future. Generally, Godsblood is not in a state where physical resistance is likely to happen unprovoked.

Comments

[baltimores]

[ In almost any other situation, in almost any other world, Amos would feel for him. To experience tragedy that horrific when you're that young. To be taken and used, no matter the justifications those in charge say to tell themselves that what they're doing is for the greater good, whether a kid gets to be a kid or not. He would have a problem with it. Would want to protect Yuuta from it.

But here it's completely irrelevant, and he will kill him if he has to. It's not a great feeling, but it also isn't one he'll shy away from; when this is done and over with, when he's left to lick his wounds and reflect on everything that went wrong over the course of this operation, Amos will have to come to terms with the fact that he was willing to end the life (temporarily or not) of someone so young just because they were going against the Regent.

... He's not going to have a problem with it. He doesn't need a reason to kill, ever. Never has, never will; but at least here, for all the difference it doesn't really make, he has one. He would say it's good that Yuuta doesn't have a killer instinct for multiple reasons — it advantages him, it means Yuuta's still a good person.

Hell, he's probably still a good person if it turns out Yuuta does have one and it simply isn't always active. Except for the telltale aura of the Pleroma contradicting that, explicitly identifying Yuuta as a bad person, so. Here they are.

He'd been starting to pull his fist back to hit Yuuta again when he'd dropped the sword; that had been all the moment of pause that Yuuta would need, give him a clear opening to nail Amos, send him straight to the ground, winded and bleeding from his nose, his mouth, from the deep cuts on his palms reopening (and it's not as though from the past day he has a lot of blood left to spare). He has strength and not endurance, and any semblance of the latter he feels burning under his skin, longing to come out and take over, is so far away it might as well not actually be there.

Amos groans from his prone position, forcing himself to stand back up; coughs up blood, spitting it on the ground as he gets back to his feet, staring at this.

kid.

still just a kid, and he does not care.

There is almost certainly internal damage. Amos stares at Yuuta, expression unreadable, face completely blank, devoid of anything that could possibly be going on upstairs.

And then he bares his teeth and lunges straight for Yuuta's shard, aiming to rip it from his body if he can. ]

[recursive]

( from yuuta's perspective, there's nothing to necessarily criticize or judge amos for. it's not as though any cursed spirit has ever stopped itself from preying upon a human being just because they were young — the universe was cruel and vacuous in that way, thoughtless and uncaring in the way that people could be towards one another. he had been sixteen years old, only freshly discovering a personal purpose and reason for living after having tried to end his own life before being accepted to jujutsu high, and getou suguru had targeted him specifically, believing if he could merely kill the cursed human that she was bound to, that he would be able to take rika's limitless power for himself.

in that way, he can almost respect amos. he might be coming at him with lethal intent, but at least he was trying to kill him as an adversary, not to simply get at something (or someone) else that was linked to him. there's a bizarre sort of respect inherent in something like that... or perhaps yuuta's just got a skewed understanding of people trying to kill him.

the blow is a relief, both in that it connects solidly with his opponent but also because it saves him another crushing blow to the face (he's certain if he got one or two more of those, he'd be out like a light regardless of what supernatural energy he might have swimming through his body). there's an uncharacteristic moment when amos is crumpled to the ground that yuuta... hesitates. what do I do? if he had been an enemy curse user, he certainly would have picked up his sword — he would have plunged it unswervingly into his heart, or perhaps attempted to lop off his head with one clean swing. or perhaps he would have forsworn his sword entirely and tried to wrap his arms around the man's neck as he tried to get back up, twisting until the vertebrae were all shorn apart. but he doesn't know how to do what he wants to do, which is just incapacitate him. he can just hit him again — he'll just hit him again, and it's when he makes this decision, cursed energy pooling around a raised and clenched fist in a ghastly pale aura, that amos takes advantage of his pause to get back up and lunge at him, less like a human combatant he's ever fought before and more like a pouncing tiger (the urge to write descending bear here was very strong, but I mostly resisted it).

when set opposite him, yuuta's reinforced strength can match amos', but throwing himself at him bodily like this — cursed energy can do a lot for him, but it can't make up for mass. he tries for a valiant moment to hold his ground and go back into a grapple with the man, but he ends up getting bowled over and sent crashing into the ground. the impact forces the air out of his lungs, stunning him for a moment — or, at least, a moment that lasts long enough for him to realize that the man is going for his shard, as brutal and straight-forward as an animal going for the throat of its prey. an instinctual, existential horror grips him; he's not sure he's felt afraid like this, not in months and months. it's enough to force his breath out of him again in a hoarse whine, desperate; he strikes at amos, pushes at him, trying to put enough force and cursed energy into the attacks to get him away from him, but he doesn't seem to be able to —

sensing his real distress and fear, the invisible, spiritual line connecting yuuta and rika goes taut. this whole time yuuta has been imploring her to stay where she is and do as he asked for her to, but now the programming left to her by the original rika overrides his commands; the cursed spirit leaves the room that the fight for vaeka is taking place in, flying at top speed to where amos wrestles yuuta to the ground, teeth and claws having torn through layers of clothing running red with blood to try to get at the shard that rested just above his heart, having just started to prise it free — )

YOU!!

( on either side of amos' head, two massive, pale hands appear; ghastly and large enough to perhaps wrap fully around his torso, they instead attempt to enclose crushingly around his neck and shoulders, to slowly force him back and lift him up. )

You hurt him... You—!! ( the voice is high and shrill, like a young girls, though heavily distorted.

yuuta barely has the time or the wherewithal to think about the situation, or what it might mean that rika had suddenly abandoned her mission to come save him. she had probably saved him from something terrible in the long run, regardless. )

[baltimores]

[ Being anything other than straightforward when trying to take someone else's life would be fucked up. It isn't supposed to be a whole thing. You kill someone else for whatever reason, they're dead, and you move on. That's it. That's all it should be.

That's all he's trying to do.

He would take advantage of anyone in a prone position. He would expect anyone to take advantage of him in a prone position. If Yuuta wants to open himself up to being killed by a descending bear (because I am fully ready to commit), then that isn't for Amos to question. It's for him to use. Anyone else would — should — do the same, especially in a war. Neither of them should have time to try to merely incapacitate.

But the job isn't done; not until he gets ahold of Yuuta's shard. Thanks to their shared legacy, that fear hits him, spurs him on. He'd lived through his own before. It's easy to live through that of an enemy's. The whine just tells him he's getting closer, as Amos uses his mass to keep himself on top of Yuuta, keep giving him the upper hand, let him put an end to this—

That ethereal voice strikes him with something Yuuta will probably recognize as horror. For Amos, he doesn't know what it is, other than that something is going horribly wrong.

He is left suddenly at the mercy of. He doesn't know what. Amos thrashes, doing his best to pry himself free; he needs to get out of here he needs to get out of here he needs to get out of here and he can't, forced off of Yuuta, forced upright, forced in the air, and between the terror that's unrecognizable to him and all the blood loss he'd suffered the day before, Amos is left truly, completely helpless.

He brings his arms up to try to pry at the hands on him. His legs kick uselessly. He grits his teeth and bucks and snarls like a wild animal caught in a trap, knowing that their end is near but fully intent on fighting to their very last breath. And he remains completely at Rika's mercy all the while. ]

[recursive]

( ooc: wrapping this one up if you don't mind! let me know if you want me to change anything tho )

( he does feel it. initially the rattle of fear feels like his own, but it persists and even strengthens even as yuuta's is slowly replaced with a bleed of relief that rika had come to his rescue. sure, it makes him anxious about what her absence in the fight at vaeka's side might mean, but — even after orimoto rika had left him to pass on to the afterlife, there's still a piece of her embedded in the creature which now lifts amos away from the young man she'd once had promise to marry her. it might be a rote and mechanical sense of protectiveness and defensiveness, but the reason it was still there and the reason it still acts in the way that it does is a simple one:

love. they come by their Legacy honestly and in different ways, perhaps, but it's always been both yuuta's motivating drive and the protective shield around him.

when yuuta had been assigned as itadori yuuji's executioner, it hadn't taken him very long. he had exchanged a few blows with the young man, surprised by the strength, speed, and instincts of his new kouhai, but all it had taken was for him to summon rika. with her hands at either side of him, pinning him immobile, he'd taken the broken remains of his sword and rammed it through the boy's heart. he had, of course, fixed the damage right after he'd caused it (he had to fulfill his binding vow, after all), but as the same sort of scene plays out here, he thinks about doing the same. it would be the right thing to do, right? this man clearly hadn't shown any mercy to him. why should he for him?

he... he doesn't know. he can still feel that fear shaking through their connection, a feeling of dull helplessness in the clutches of something large and unknowable.

after a moment, he gasps out, ) Rika, don't - don't kill him.

( but given how long the scene has played on, how powerful and vice-like her vengeful grasp is around his neck — she doesn't seem willing to just let him go. or, at least, not until she can feel him go limp and unconscious, and then she will discard him to the side, fully discontent that she had to do so while he was still alive.

it takes yuuta a long moment or two to pull himself together mentally and emotionally before doing so physically, getting his legs beneath him and slowly moving towards where he believed johnny and syrlya were trying to rescue vaeka. )