Originally Posted by
grampagen
"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.
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."