EVENT #5: SOVEREIGN CITIZENS (VENERA)

[aionmods]

Sovereign Citizens

VENERA

In contrast the Aion's last visit, they now arrive in Venera on a completely average day... or so it seems. Unlike Godsblood, Venera has been given no warning as to what's about to befall it; the Kenoma are simply authorized to arrive and begin their bloody work without fanfare. Even their entourage of Achamite soldier don't stick out that much; in the time since the plague left, the city has refilled with occupying forces. Notably, the Hylician ones seem to be keeping out of the way, almost as if they've heard some things and would rather not be involved too closely in what's to come.

As opposed to the ghost town it was during the plague, Venera is now reasonably active, with most attending to their usual business. Shops are open, and its people are withdrawn but superficially friendly when meeting strangers. Initially, the targets of the Kenoma hit list will have no way of knowing what's coming for them, but after the first couple attacks word will begin to spread. Those that have recently been engaging in seditious behavior will become harder to find, leaving their usual homes and workplaces to stay elsewhere, and making other attempts to escape the Regent's attention.

Once those alerts have been raised, the Kenoma will have to engage in more detective work to find their targets, questioning other Venerans and seeking out fugitives in the homes of their family and friends. In the meantime, some of those who believe they are in danger may become desperately enough to seek out the Pleroma directly, imploring them for aid. Unfortunately, seeking out one sect may just as easily draw the attention of the other. Most uninvolved Venerans will be too terrified to intervene one way or another, reluctant to aid in the persecution of their neighbors but fearful of consequences. If your Aion travels openly, it will take some effort to pin them down long enough to hold a conversation.

SEEDS OF DESPAIR

Several days into the culling of Venera, the Aions will have witnessed the city gradually withdraw into itself. The streets become vacant as more and more people decide it isn't worth the risk to be seen outside, abandoning work and play alike to hide out in their homes, refusing to answer their doors to all except the most desperate pleading. Those that can't avoid their daily obligations are quiet and morose, trying their best to remain unseen and unremarked upon.

If your character has been observed as a Kenoma, either now or in their previous visits to the city, the citizens will look upon them as if they are the messengers of death. If you are seen as a Pleroma, they will resist your gaze, as if fearing your presence alone might leave them marked. In rarer cases, you will see those with stronger spirits, with glares of hatred or determination. They are powerless now, but seeds have been sewn, and whether they are the seeds of despair or of action are yet unclear.

By the time the Kenoma's hit list has been fully addressed, several have been killed and several more have been rushed from their homes to flee the city entirely. There have been holes left in the tapestry of the community they were once part of. One way or another, their absence will be felt keenly by those they left behind.

QUESTIONS

What is the best way for Aions to travel to Venera?
Estinien has plans to get an early start for the Pleroma by teleporting to the Lover's shrine and flying somewhere closer to set up a portal from the ocean caves near the Godsblood Lodestone to a spot of farmland closer to Venera. Paul will be setting up a portal directly from Achamoth to one of the Achamite outposts in Venera.

How much force can the Kenoma use while interrogating Venerans?
While they are generally not permitted to kill Venerans who haven't tried to physically fight them, they will be permitted to apply both physical and mental pressure upon those that refuse to provide them with information regarding the whereabouts of their targets. This duress should be proportional to the resistance the Veneran is offering. The Regent is not inviting them to terrorize Venera on a level to a level they cannot reasonably blaim themselves for.

Comments

[tohell]

( ooc: sorry for the hold up! let me know if this works. )

[ For the brunt of their stay in Venera, whenever his fellow demon had decided to exercise his independence by shaking J off with a litany of complaints or by means of simply ditching him, he permitted Makoto to wander off only as far as his vision allowed. Tabs were easily kept from whatever rooftop or patch in the sky J had taken to.

Here in this new world, J's traditional methods of helicoptering his little troublemaker have run aground, when teleporting to Makoto's side by means of a rune haven't worked since his arrival. The rules of Hell that bestow upon demons a life immortal have been wiped clean too. And the vulnerable shard they all carry like a fragile piece of china, imparted with their very soul, makes J all together reluctant to trust him to his own devices.

After last month's antics and the earful J had learned about it from the Kenoma's mass communion, he had every reason to not trust the little mischief-maker farther than he could be thrown. (Considerably less, as J will learn later this month.)

It's on one of these monitored outings that he happens upon the skirmish that leaves Makoto impaled without the delicacy of a pinned butterfly's neatly mounted display. The arrow's trajectory makes for a gruesome tableau, which concludes faster than J has time to intervene as Makoto blinks out of sight. He means to follow the one responsible for this, but in the darkness and confusion, J initially loses sight of the escapees within the city's walls.

When he finds Hayame anew, she's absent the little tail of a trailing companion and his mechanical crossbow. Discovered in a momentary slip of inattention, while she's so absorbed with her own vindictive efforts of decapitating her spoils, comprised of the body belonging to a recently dispatched solider, that she forgets the most basic rules any should know when they aren't the biggest fish in the bowl: distractions can be deadly.

Here J could take her off guard, moving in for a killing strike from either her blind spot or with a dive from above. But his bloody memories of Makoto's attempts to do likewise quash the latter option, when Hayame could quickly use her bow if she senses something amiss. The darkness makes it difficult to tell if it lies on the floor or tethered to her back, if it's there at all. There's some moonlight that filters in between the clouds but a paltry few number of torches in the abandoned a courtyard bracketed in by walls and archways that swallow up the meager light. So for now, he sticks to the ground where there are plentiful nooks to hide within, and more escape routes than the open air. Tonight, his retaliation takes on an intimately vindictive approach. ]

There you are. [ From the thick tapestry of shadows clinging to the walls around whichever courtyard the centaur woman has chosen for her butchering, J steps halfway into the light.

Tonight he finally takes Makoto's advice and dons a spell to look entirely different from the amalgamation of horns and clawed paws, melded onto a man in ways that assure he's no mortal of any sort. Falsehood that it is, his two limbs should be perceived as four, with a heavily muscled equine body stretching out from a torso built to match. J had seen the mountain stallion in Hayame's visions, woven across the crumbling stars. They had reflected every bit of her would-be-lover from the vibrancy of his coat to the lines marking a face that had weathered both hardship and joy. As she commits further atrocities under the cover of night, a facsimile of Matsukaze catches her red-handed and swathed in blood like warpaint.]

I've been searching for you. [ Sweet words from a lover, made horrifying when spoken by the fox to the hare. ] Everywhere.

[ There are many ways this illusion can run afoul, beginning with the timbre of J's voice that he lowers with the practice of an actor who has likely been everything and anything to those who have summoned him to perform for his temporary ownership every manner of role, from advisor to lover to victim. Higher tiered Kenoma can pierce through the illusion a glamour provides more readily than fingers through a paper screen. And he doesn't doubt the opposing faction's more powerful members hold this ability, and the gift of sight that illuminates each Aion by their alignment. Perhaps the effort he puts into assuming another identity won't be worth the trouble, but he'll take the chance and try. How else could J ever live with himself if he doesn't give her a taste of what he'd felt as her arrow punched through flesh and blood, right above Makoto's beating heart? ]

it's perf <3

[warmare]

[There is a reason that Hayame does not carry a torch or lantern, even though the moonlight flickering through the clouds cannot provide enough for some to properly see. She would not win a contest with a feline, but the eyes of a jinba are keener in the dark than a human's. The shadows weren't quite as intimidating, she could navigate tricky ground of roots and pitfalls decently even in the night, and she could surely detect movement around her if need be, respond to any potential threat while she set about field dressing her head to take it away and leave the body behind. It would be just enough to let the Achamites fear what had happened, wonder where the rest had gone before she exposes the three she has gathered on a proper dais, with a proper posting warning what will happen to anyone else who continues to serve the Regent...

The beginnings of a word reach her ear, so close that she should have noticed it beforehand, she should have seen something, felt something. Her hands fly from the head she has placed on a nearby barrel to tie it into the cloth and instead reach for the bow disguised along the long line of her equine body, bringing it to bear and pulling an arrow from her quiver in the space of seconds. She is too finely trained not to turn sharp from the "waist" to notch the arrow, pull back the string, sight along the shaft, and see-

A foreleg covered in that distinctive rusty coat. The raw strength of the body that had once overpowered her and yet also held her when she wept and sobbed with frustration and dishonor. The face that she had wished would turn towards her and smile, just for her, no matter how shameful and womanly such urges were.

The Red Tiger of the Mountains. Matsukaze.

She'd been ready to shoot. If it was anyone she even vaguely identified as an enemy, she would have released the arrow and let it drive into the chest of her new company no matter who they were. If it were a native of this city, perhaps she would show mercy, but this-

Her voice freezes in her throat, and nothing will come out. Her eyes are black pinpricks in stormy grey, shocked beyond belief even amongst this world where so many things are shocking beyond belief. Her hearts are pounding, skipping, struggling to understand how it could be that she sees this man, hears this man-

Fingers slip on the bowstring.

The shot goes wild, shattering against the stone of the courtyard wall more than several feet away from "Matsukaze"'s head. It can't be. Were those people right, who'd claimed that people from their lost world could still appear in this place? Was this some foul plan of a Pleroma or another aion entity?

She doesn't know, all she can begun to think in this moment is to try and get one word out of her taut throat.]

Matsukaze... ?

[She doesn't even succeed particularly well at that.]

<3

[tohell]

[ To stand perfectly still as an arrow twangs past would ping as a strange reaction. Most don't weather friendly fire with the detached spectatorship J does, when he's spent nearly a thousand years unafraid of death, when he healed every wound and lived immune to all physical ails. So the demon wills his muscles and the illusion shimmering like a second skin around him to start. His massive structure jerking itself away from the explosion of steel into man-made rock, not out of some sniveling cowardice, but more muted instinct to side-step the debris that shoot off every which way.

Hands spring up to shield his face as broken pebbles from shattered stone ricochet off the opposite wall or the inside of a wrist. Only when the coast is clear and nothing threatens to poke out an eye, does he ease those arms into lowering from their defensive posture.

His is an artificial knee-jerk reaction to stimuli that he concocts by picking clear the bare bones of her story. The man named Matsukaze barely resorting to fright when his death came barreling into his arms. The shock and acceptance he resorted to in her memories bleeding from one to the next, just as he now does when the threat ebbs.

After leaning forward to spy the handiwork delivered to the fractured portion of a sturdy wall, his head and that shock of red hair turns to face her with an expression at first perplexed. As though the stallion's mind is industriously trying to piece together the reasoning for Hayame's ruthless welcome that had been cast his way. J knows. He understands how her retaliation isn't overblown when danger comes in many an insidious shape and form here.

Though, even an arrow loosed falls woefully short of what would cease his parading about in a dead man's skin. Not unless that projectile should have found its mark, buried deep within his heart or head. Or better yet, the shard nestled above J's eyes. That would have ended the monstrous creature set on torturing her, once and for all.

But it doesn't, so the show continues on.

The self-deprecating touch of a palm, pressing to the stallion's strong nape, is something he imagines a man might do when guilt rises up for a misstep now regretted. Though he takes them still, those slow paces forward that draw his considerable frame nearer to her. As though the hooves that are but an illusion cannot stop the inexorable pull that guides them on. ]

You... don't seem very happy to see me. [ His brows lift, easing together in an arch above eyes that attempt to catch hers. The false-stallion's apprehensive glimmer of hope so keen it writes itself across his face. An expression of vulnerability made all the more apparent as the yards between them vanish. ]

;~;

[warmare]

[She should notch another arrow. She should shoot it, right into his heart, because this... It cannot be the man that she had come to know, in those short months she spent captive in that hidden village in the mountains. The one who had started coming to her makeshift prison each morning to offer her smiles and food, attempts to soften her that she mistook for bribery or poison. The one she'd tried to drag off the safety of a fallen log bridge into the roaring waterfall below, determined to at least take the strongest fighter out with her to cleanse the dishonor of capture... and the one who had grabbed her hand and refused to let go, risking his own life to pull her deadweight back up to safety.

The only person in her entire life who had told her that her life was precious. That it was alright to want to live in a world where she was just happy to be alive.

And look at her now, the farthest thing from happy. Wishing for death every day but not willing to take her own life until she could take her revenge or at least lose it in battle against the Regent or one of his lieutenants.]

I will not be fooled again.

[She tries to keep the shake from her voice. Locks her knees, so that she won't back away from him... or perhaps, she fears more that she might move closer. She had promise... She had promised to bring him the torch, to leap into his arms, and yet-]

You cannot be him-

[Blinded by Innocence, she had once thought she had seen him. But that man spoke in a voice that was nothing like Matsukaze's, he said words that Matsukaze would never say, and so her eyes were blinded but her hearts were not. This- It must just simply be a more skilled deceiver. Despite how her rage had committed her to the path of violence against the Kenoma... her status as an aion of the Pleroma had not strengthened. Her hearts weren't in it... the principles of light and goodness. If they were... she would have the True Sight to identify another of their kind by the glow of him, she would be able to see through a glamor, but-

She doesn't.]

I looked for you...

[It sounds like an accusation, even though it is intended to be a damning proof that he cannot be what he claims to be, looks to be. (She doesn't realize she's accidentally said "you" and not "him".)]

I asked across every corners of this awful world, and no one- No one has seen another jinba... !

[tohell]

[ They say revenge is best served cold. Contrary to popular belief, it isn't well suited to be acted upon with fire in the veins and in a heated moment of virulent fury. No, the greatest retribution is the steady culmination of painstaking work, leading to empires crumbling and heads sent rolling. Things which require a sharp and cunning mind, not a berserker on a rampage.

This may not be the fruit of months or years of planning, but it does come with forethought. A scheme comprised of how best to strike at the heart of this woman's most potent regrets. Because he knows, with a keen, knife-sharp severity, the heart can suffer for millennia, long after every flesh wound has become forgotten. Something no mortal could comprehend when they've never been forced to live with loss for half so long as he. How the soul can ache for a love that never was; torturing itself, imagining what it might have been, with kisses that never were, upon a mouth that hadn't been touched.

It's a pain they share. A wound freshly scabbed over that J intends to reopen. Exposing the festering pus of infection that has taken root to sour her heart, contaminating every new chance at joy with the poison of her bitter memories before it can thrive.

Her bow is a lethal weapon, with arrows too close at hand to dismiss a second use in the span of time it takes for him to reach her. So J is cautious to maintain conversation, keeping her preoccupied as he moves at a slow pace of steady hooves to round away from her blindside, converging towards her front. A dangerous position, but one that stirs less instinctual paranoia than the rest.

A pantomime of shock puts that on hold, stilling him with a twist of potent surprise working through stolen features, as she professes her desperate manhunt. ]

You went that far? Traveled across this whole world, just to find me?

[ A wide hand rises to drag itself down the face he now wears, strong-jawed and weathered by a life full of strife, pitted against the men that had seemed so intent on bringing death upon his head. At first, it seems to be an expression of defeat, seeping into the rest of a body language that rounds shoulders gone tense then slowly turned slack as frustration bleeds into the futility of a guilt that has deep roots. Apologetic to suit the words that fall just short of a whisper; too gruff in their masculine depths to appropriately stay hushed. But there's sincerity in how tired the half-hidden look is, when deep-set eyes seek Hayame out. Focused upon her face, from where they reside above the hand cupped over a mouth he grips in regret, remorse, in so much restrained feeling it has to be dammed up and braced behind the force of his own palm. ]

I'm sorry.

[ J can't supply a fabricated history for an illusion's whereabouts or an explanation that doesn't clash wildly with the fact every Aion, both Kenoma and Pleroma, had been summoned to the Regent's presence before this mission had begun. Just as she's said, Matsukaze had not been among those ranks, nor anywhere else in this land for that matter. It's a damning bit of evidence to disprove the portrayal J is working so hard at, just to reap the rewards of her anguish and sorrow. So he dodges any answer, and says nothing to explain the reason for how one of her own has made an appearance out of the blue.

Words have always been J's greatest skill. Twisting them to his benefit, turning everything upon its head. He does that now by taking what Hayame admits to beyond what's been said, and uses them to side-track her from the obvious truth that's so close it could jump up and bite her. Hayame's longing becomes a weapon trained against her, aimed at her weakest point. In this way he tells a woman in love, hopeful and desperate, the cruelest of lies. And J gives her exactly what she wants to hear. ]

Still- [ His hand slides away with a shaky exhale, speaking volumes without the need for any verbose litany of words. ] It makes me happy, knowing you wanted to see me, too.

[warmare]

[She can't believe it. She can't let herself think that this is the man who had plied her with his cooking each day in attempts to soften her heart to him and the members of the village full of orphans. She can't allow herself to hope that this is the man who had happily tosses his son into the air and played with those children who looked to him in the absence of any living fathers to be had, and he had been so fair, so firm, and yet so kind. She can't even begin to trust that-

That this was the man she had thought... perhaps if things were different, perhaps if they had time, perhaps if they lived in that better world he spoke of, where she could just be happy to be alive... Perhaps then, he might have smiled at her, and when he reached out his hand... perhaps she could have taken it, and let him encircle her in those arms.

The Matsukaze in front of her comes closer. He moves like Matsukaze moved, he did that- that thing, those things Matsukaze did, how his large, strong hands rubbed into the back of his neck when he was thinking, how he covered his mouth when he was shaken...the movements distract her from the fact that his hooves don't make the right sound on the cobblestone streets, that there's something just a tiny bit off about his voice-

He's sorry. He's happy. He's-]

Say something... Tell me something that only Matsukaze would know, if you really are him...

[She is ashamed of how her voice shakes in the middle of her words. She is sure... No, she is not sure. What would Matsukaze say, in this world? She had imagined it so many times in her darkest hours. What would Matsukaze do? What would Matsukaze tell her? It never seemed right when she tried to do it by herself, it never eased the pain in her hearts or the loneliness that had been growing and growing unchecked every gods damned day-

Was it Matsukaze, if he did not mention the son he had once begged her for the time to save? If anyone could have somehow slipped the gaze of the Kenoma and the Pleroma both and been able to live off the land it would have been him, but would Matsukaze have been able to avoid that Regent's shadow court? Could it be Matsukaze, if she almost stepped back away from him... and yet didn't?

She doesn't know.

And she can't-

She can't shoot until she knows.]