Original join date: 11/23/2004
Eclectic Connoisseur of all things written, drawn, or imaginatively created.
My Forum check it out
Bruceleegreyhulk's RPG & Story Forum
Characters: Cyber Samurai, Wilima Stonewall, Red Oni, Jaakobah , Giduiz Mazi, Midas Goldsteel
Gambit: Gambit see your bet and raise it, because the cards always be in my favor.
Parsley returned the bottle of wine back where she got it from, along with the glass after she washed it out. Sarada stepped inside. "Huh. Drinking again?" she commented. "Surprised you didn't die."
Parsley snorted and shook her head at the absurdity of the statement. "I took one sip. Only a weak, pathetic fool would die after taking one sip of wine!" She may not have perished, but she was a little tipsy.
They shared a hearty laugh as they headed back outside to wait.
The Nevadian smirked for a moment, lifting his cup slightly towards his friend in celebration. “I’ll certainly drink to a good life, and to the men assembled here, but you give me a bit too much credit.”
He drank deeply from the cup, consuming a sizable portion of its contents in a mighty swig.
He exhaled deeply, his senses set ablaze by the intensity of the spirit, before swiftly burning itself out, replacing itself with the cool refreshing tranquility of the morning dew.
“By the time I got here, you were already doing what needed to be done with the Priestess and the others.” He explained, pausing to clear his throat, which lead way to a burp, courtesy of the raw power of the planets liquor, “I just happened to follow your lead….”
He laughed sheepishly, “Truth be told, I’m not sure what I what have done, if you hadn’t already made the decision for me…..It’s still obvious enough what the right thing to do is as a warrior, but it’s less so as a leader, as inadequate as I may be in that regard.”
And that’s without getting into how tangled things get with all this paperwork and the clan heads breathing down my neck….
He paused, frowning, “No. That’s not entirely true…. I can’t avert my eyes to such a wickedness. I would have made the same decision. But even a moments hesitation can lead to catastrophe…. Maybe I really have lost my touch these days….”
He took another drink, this one slower, as he savored the taste.
“It’s good to see that you haven’t though. When Ulysses told me what you did, I instantly understood. While you look a bit more….” He paused, considering his words as he looked over his friend, clearly worn down from his time among the stars.
“Haggard.” He conceded at last, “I can see your sense of justice, or goodness, or whatever it translates to on Earth hasn’t grown weaker in the least. “
Held blinked absently at his friend, the sharpness of his mind dulled by the potency of the drink in his hand. After a moment, his eyes widened in understanding.As the Captain made his leave to compute the new data sequences, Ochazuke remained there with Held and Zaofan. He stood there facing away into the stars.
"Nightfall beneath the sky of another world. Until this past year I have never experienced such a thing. Nor had I stopped to ponder the field of view."
Besides the outer lights of the spaceships gathered in the sky where they docked, there was little to disturb the sight above. The swaying trees and crackle of torches seemed to be silenced by the unobstructed view of endless scores of stars under an unpolluted atmosphere. The tails of shooting stars streaked across the dark canopy, as if they traced for their eyes what wild, mythic shapes they'd bestowed upon the ancients of this place; but try as he might, he could not find nor truly understand the spirit that rose from this place.
I had almost forgotten with all that had transpired, never mind all the species I deal with….Humans generally don’t go too far beyond their Planet…And in his case, there was so much going on at home, I can see why he’d view it as only a luxury….
Even now, I don’t think he would have gone along with it, were Auroc not looming so large over Earth….
The Nevadian couldn’t help but stand in awe of his companions resolve, an admiring smile appearing on his face."Little over five years ago my training brought me to the North Continent back on Earth. Seated beneath the icy peak upon the tundra, I would look up to try and find constellations. I'd been taught to recognize the movement of Heaven as some sign of auspicious meaning. Aligned this way, it would be time to seize your fortune; find the pole star and destiny is on your side."
"I wonder, was it the same for you, Held? The Saiyans? The Threshling princess when she made her arrival? Everything must happen for a reason.
From The Doctor to the Gods and certain, extraordinarily bold Guardians, and creatures like That Man or twisted monarchs from in-between realms, there was always that struggle, the urge to seize upon the yawning void and create some semblance of order, to design meaning for oneself, even if it meant imposing it where there was none.
Strive.
"Ever since we crossed path with Evangeline, I'd still looked skyward and saw nothing but one wretched calamity after the other, waiting to fall from the heavens."
His fist tightened by his side with such intensity his knuckles popped.
"I wonder. Does Auroc know enough to feel the same way now?"
“I can’t speak to the fortunes of the others, but landing on Earth certainly is one of the better things that happened to me. It was either that or be scattered into Stardust, and the odds of surviving, let alone landing there were so infinitesimal, that I truly was the luckiest man in the universe that day…”
…. Still, maybe it would have been better if I never made it to Agrippa that day…They’d still have. Well, something, at least.
“I had my life, I avoided that woman, and had more freedom than I knew what to do with. I didn’t know what your stars say, but it took a few years for me to see anything other than ‘jackpot’… in any part of your world”
He laughed slightly, weary.
“If I had learned to read them, I probably would have seen something about all good things coming to an end eventually…”
The again, that sky might have been meant for the Earth, just as much as myself.. The number of incidents that planet has encountered in such a short span of time…They’ve had in a span of years, once in a generational incidents….It’s impressive, if it wasn’t so terrifying…
He shrugged. His life was still far, far, better than many others. He still existed, wealth and fortune beyond all expectation. He found himself constrained by duty and responsibility to an almost suffocating degree, but that was simply how the cards played out.
“I don’t know if Auroc is standing beneath that sort of sky, but…
His smile faded, with the barest hint of a smirk remaining as he consumed the last dregs of the contents of his cup.
“…If our luck keeps up, we’ll get the luxury of asking him soon enough.”
"Hey, you spotted the spells and then you locked it down! Maybe there's something to be said about working smarter, y'know?"
Zaofan raised a glass and joined Held in a second sip, and though laughter left his lips and lined his face in the moment, there was something held deeply in his eyes, silent and unspoken.
"I thought we'd be alone in facing off against the Threshlings, that the odds were against us. Really, I was shocked that there'd be others in their territories just trying to live their lives even in the face of all of this. And they're brave but still..."
His usual bright laughter shook him as he shrugged and took another hot swig.
"I had to do something. After all, heh...after all the training with the Master, what else have we been preparing for all this time? Zxu'ro's skills have been buried for far too long. I'd rather us Earthlings be known for trying to help out the wider universe, the way he would've."
A low grunt left Ochazuke, for as bemusing as Held's examination of his own fate and fortune there, twist in the grasp of a certain, desperate Guardian, for he had little more to add to the recently minted Admiral's humble appraisal.Held blinked absently at his friend, the sharpness of his mind dulled by the potency of the drink in his hand. After a moment, his eyes widened in understanding.
I had almost forgotten with all that had transpired, never mind all the species I deal with….Humans generally don’t go too far beyond their Planet…And in his case, there was so much going on at home, I can see why he’d view it as only a luxury….
Even now, I don’t think he would have gone along with it, were Auroc not looming so large over Earth….
The Nevadian couldn’t help but stand in awe of his companions resolve, an admiring smile appearing on his face.
“I can’t speak to the fortunes of the others, but landing on Earth certainly is one of the better things that happened to me. It was either that or be scattered into Stardust, and the odds of surviving, let alone landing there were so infinitesimal, that I truly was the luckiest man in the universe that day…”
…. Still, maybe it would have been better if I never made it to Agrippa that day…They’d still have. Well, something, at least.
“I had my life, I avoided that woman, and had more freedom than I knew what to do with. I didn’t know what your stars say, but it took a few years for me to see anything other than ‘jackpot’… in any part of your world”
He laughed slightly, weary.
“If I had learned to read them, I probably would have seen something about all good things coming to an end eventually…”
The again, that sky might have been meant for the Earth, just as much as myself.. The number of incidents that planet has encountered in such a short span of time…They’ve had in a span of years, once in a generational incidents….It’s impressive, if it wasn’t so terrifying…
He shrugged. His life was still far, far, better than many others. He still existed, wealth and fortune beyond all expectation. He found himself constrained by duty and responsibility to an almost suffocating degree, but that was simply how the cards played out.
“I don’t know if Auroc is standing beneath that sort of sky, but…
His smile faded, with the barest hint of a smirk remaining as he consumed the last dregs of the contents of his cup.
“…If our luck keeps up, we’ll get the luxury of asking him soon enough.”
In the moment, Evangeline's gambit had been pivotal to the salvation of the Earth, but years on now, at the distal end they stood upon the reverb of that plucked thread, and Ochazuke looked upward to face the endless chasm of cold space. Empty, weightless, but even stilled in this night sky, the heaviness of what was to come from the currents of this starry ocean left a sinking within him once. Now, with a destination so near, the burden eased.
"If our fates were intertwined by some divine purpose before, I take some solace that this is no longer something preordained, or simple luck," he said. "This is no longer providence or some cosmic accident, my friend, but what we will to do from this moment forward."
A lifetime ago they'd been so powerless to change things. Now through fire-forged bonds and bitter work taken in solidarity, Ochazuke now had an expanded view of the wider universe, and recognized that he and their peers stood no longer as miniscule beings pulled along in the wake of some cruel design. They stood precariously upon the threshold of those that would reshape worlds.
"When they moved upon us, they spoke fondly of their divine reckoning, hidden behind the veil of their design. Now the path has been revealed, the time of retribution is at hand...."
He stripped his left sleeve and pulled off the corded armband, the Prajied amulet he'd received after a grueling course of training. Focusing his intention, it thrummed with an acute resonance, reminiscent of that woman's aura. Perfect stillness. Hozon.
"Gather the others, that this time, we might deliver it to the Majin God."
"Ah ain't much of a warrior if ah have so many issues. Mother issues, death issues, confidence issues. An here ah thought ah'd outgrown most of them. Ah need to beat something up to take my mind off of it." Dash then looked around, then up, then back, "So, how much longer before the road trip begins?"
Original join date: 11/23/2004
Eclectic Connoisseur of all things written, drawn, or imaginatively created.
Original join date: 11/23/2004
Eclectic Connoisseur of all things written, drawn, or imaginatively created.
My Forum check it out
Bruceleegreyhulk's RPG & Story Forum
Characters: Cyber Samurai, Wilima Stonewall, Red Oni, Jaakobah , Giduiz Mazi, Midas Goldsteel
Gambit: Gambit see your bet and raise it, because the cards always be in my favor.
Original join date: 11/23/2004
Eclectic Connoisseur of all things written, drawn, or imaginatively created.
" Yeah, I could stop calling them Zawk and Vion. however, those two styles have been different from Aoem user to Aoem user, throughout the history of Aoem. Due to Aoem long history and because of the adaptability of Zawk and Vion. There would have been so many variations of those two styles," Praxat said.
"That Zawk and Vion would have become generic umbrella terms for multiple styles that share basic components, rather than just referring to two styles. Yeah, I think I might do that, be the first Aoem user to actually name her Zawk and Vion Aoem styles," Praxat said.
Last edited by bruceleegreyhulk; 08-09-2020 at 10:47 AM.
My Forum check it out
Bruceleegreyhulk's RPG & Story Forum
Characters: Cyber Samurai, Wilima Stonewall, Red Oni, Jaakobah , Giduiz Mazi, Midas Goldsteel
Gambit: Gambit see your bet and raise it, because the cards always be in my favor.
Inanna could sense it. The time had come. Standing, head turned toward the heavens, the Oni that was took a deep breath and cast her net wide; in preparation for the great work to come.
...Held. Inanna she said, voice carried by the cosmic winds toward their destination. I have come bearing word... Your wife is looking for you.
...
Boredom at its peak. Inanna had decided now was the perfect time to mess with the self-proclaimed "Purest Soul". Which she knew was a lie of course; but it did make the game of torturing the man by teasing him, that much more fun.
Yeah, but if you... man, we're getting into weird analogy territory, like if you disintegrated Superman's arms he wouldn't be able to go "fool! Little did you know that my arms and I are one and can be remade from me!" and will his arms back into being from pure nothingness. - Pendaran
Arx Inosaan
"Hey Dash, do you think this Ninjustu master you speak of can help me developed an incomplete tech I been working on? If not, then I'll thus continue working on it myself. Maybe I need something to push me to complete it or at least get close to completing it?" Praxat said.
" By the way, I have devised an upgrade for my Lightning Storm tech and, I've given this upgrade a new name," Praxat said.
Last edited by bruceleegreyhulk; 08-12-2020 at 11:59 PM.
My Forum check it out
Bruceleegreyhulk's RPG & Story Forum
Characters: Cyber Samurai, Wilima Stonewall, Red Oni, Jaakobah , Giduiz Mazi, Midas Goldsteel
Gambit: Gambit see your bet and raise it, because the cards always be in my favor.
Inwardly, Dash thought to herself, again, about how similar Praxat and Cyanna are. One way they are different is that Cyanna would be asking more questions about others, while Praxat often talks about herself, though not in a bad way. Dash had to admire Praxat's determination to perfect her skills, though she tends to go about it like, well, a scientist.
"If you askin about my Sensei in Ninjutsu, ah don't want to talk much about her out here in the open. It's not like you haven't met her before, though maybe you weren't formally introduced. Ah can't say what she can or can't help you with. It's not that she can't, the question is will she want to, or will she expect you to figure it out on your own."
After a moment's thought, "She kinda lives by a code of conditional non-interference. As she explained it to me, if she got involved too often, an in the wrong way, it would go very badly for her. Yet, occasionally, she bends that code, partly out of boredom, partly because she's taken an interest in someone or something, partly because she is asked for help and offered something in return, or she has a personal relationship with someone. It's complex. So ah have no idea what she'd make of you, or what she would be willing to offer you."
"To be honest, Cya, an ah are still paying off a debt to her. A debt that could take our whole lives to pay off, or we might do something that erases the debt like Meg did. Meg has already paid off her debt by becoming a Guardian, an don't ask me to explain it cause ah can't."
"it's possible she might simply send you off to one of her many acquaintances, an she knows a whole lot of people all over the universe. In which case you wouldn't owe her anything."
Last edited by Tami; 08-14-2020 at 02:34 PM.
Original join date: 11/23/2004
Eclectic Connoisseur of all things written, drawn, or imaginatively created.