[CLOSED] one microscopic cog in his catastrophic plan

[interstellarnpcs]

Who: Edward Blanche and Greg. And possibly also Meril.
What: Blanche is sick of Greg's shit.
When: Directly following Sans's rescue.
Where: In the Torture Lounge.
Warnings: Weird stuff. Spiritual violence. Creepy touches no doubt.

After being picked up in the laboratories downstairs, Greg will be left in the same room him and Blanche had their last pressing talk. No one else is there, and he is instructed by Juno to sit and not move until someone comes to speak with him. He is clearly in trouble.

Who is coming to talk to him hasn't been outright stated, but it can be easily assumed. Juno will impatiently state that she has a mess to go clean up and will leave him to his own devices.

A full hour will pass before anyone comes to speak with him.

Comments

[interstellarnpcs]

Hm. Well, at least she's honest. He finds himself smirking ever so slightly as she speaks, despite how irritated the truth of the matter makes him.

She doesn't argue with Greg's sudden dismissal. There is a faithfulness there that won't be shaken so easily, he imagines. Which...could be of use to him.

Blanche's look sharpens on her, a new sense of intent clear in his stance. Softly, the piano will begin to play on its own once more.

"I see. Then I suppose I will have to put that strength to use."

He doesn't waste the time leading into it that he did on Greg. Unlike that punishment, this one is barely personal. Instead, with a swelling sense of gravity, he will allow himself to begin slipping into his true form, the grasping tendrils of his fingers moving far past his physical ones.

They plunge into her chest.

[nibelungvalesti]

The motion came too fast for her to defend against, the sudden strike past the bounds of physics something she could not respond to. Her armor coalesced around her far too late to help, if it even could.

She wanted to throw herself backwards, to fall down, to fly away, but transfixed as she was Meril could do nothing. Well, almost nothing: the tips of her fingers quivered in midair, the only impulse to escape she had.

The worst part was how horribly familiar this all felt.

[interstellarnpcs]

It's different than with Greg. He has no use to rid her of this particular quality - no, without it she would be even less use than she is presently. Still, it's a force strong enough that he needs to be able to control it more specifically. Duty, after all, is only useful if it is pointing in the right direction.

He doesn't carve it out like the taken the love from Greg. Instead, he allows the connection to remain, but for the source to be purely in his hands. A resource to be directed at his convenience.

He almost laughs when her armor appears. That will come in handy, for his purposes. No need to waste the time on restoring it himself.

A bluish light is in his monstrous palm as he withdraws his hand, and he crushes it within the pressure of his dark claws. When he is finished, all that remains is a crystal, like a shard of ice, that seems to pull at Meril's spirit just from its proximity.

[nibelungvalesti]

She was a goddess. An Asgardian, a chooser of the slain. That, alone, bought her the strength to grit her teeth. To offer a moment's resistance, during which her hand drew an inch closer to the sword at her side.

That was no small thing, though it could avail her nothing and accomplish nothing. When his hand crushed that light, she dropped to her knees like a puppet with its strings cut -- a very apt analogy, as it happened.

[panspermia]

Mr. Universe sits up a little straighter as she crumples to the floor. He frowns at her form, then up at Blanche.

"You didn't break her, did you?" With all the personal concern of someone mucking up the wiring for the lighting. He still needs a functional keyboardist, you know.

[interstellarnpcs]

"No," he says, coldly. "She's hardly be of any use to me, like that."

Beyond that, he pays Greg little attention, concentrating on them gem clasped between his fingers and willing her to stand.

[nibelungvalesti]

She stood. Simple as that. It was, after all, her duty. With her head bowed, she stared at the floor in silence, her pupils so wide her eyes had no color to them at all except glassy blackness.