milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Seamus Harper had a lot to think about: nightmares and life--and death.

And babies. He'd been thinking about babies and little kids a lot lately, and just generally thinking a lot, and as such, he was outside for once, in open air, under an open sky, looking at the stars.

In Harper's opinion, stars weren't really interesting once you got up close and saw that they were roiling, bloated gas-balls of radioactive death. They stopped being beautiful and started being a traveling hazard.

He liked where he was sitting, though. It was a very flat rock he'd found on the other side of the lake, far away from the bar.

In his head, he'd started to call it the star-watching rock, and it seemed to him that it was someplace that was a piece of home.

Weird.

What was weirder was that the name seemed to have come into his head from somewhere else entirely...

[OOC: Whatever happens, Mesaana is last timeline-wise.]

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She had found him some time ago, and had been following him since. This had taken more time to do than she had expected and hopefully no damage had been done. She would make sure of that. Folded Light with inverted weaves had made going undetected easily.

Stepping in front of him, Mesaana carefully wove weaves of air, bonds ready to snap in place at a single impulse from her. Letting the invisibility drop, Mesaana kept a mask of silvery shimmering shadows around her whole body as she faced him down. Her crystalline voice easily recognizable as was the smug amusement in it.

"Greetings... I hope you have been having a pleasant time since our last meeting."

All he saw was a vague female-shaped thing in front of him, a silvery woven shadow of a woman.

But he knew that voice. He remembered it just like he remembered every voice of every person that'd had ever tried to stab him in the back (or the front or the side...): Gerentex, Satrina, Jaeger, Tyr, Mariska, Rasputin Genovese...

Immediately, his gun was out and he was on his feet.

"Oh yeah, real pleasant. Staggering around in the dark blindly because of, y'know, the poison you'd thrown in my face was absolutely thrilling. I had chills, I was so exhilirated."

With that motion the weaves of air that had been idly floating around him snapped tight. Unbreakable bonds of air tight enough to leave bruises wrapped his entire body. The arm with his gun jerked around like a puppet by the bonds to put his gun to his own temple.

A delicate, windchime laugh from Mesaana that quickly turned cruel and mocking. Under that shimmering veil of shadows she was surely smiling that same twisted smile of triumph that she did when she threw the poison in his face.

"...You are not the one in control here. Unlike in that space, here I have my powers. There is nothing and no one to stop me from simply forcing you to squeeze that trigger and end your pathetic little existence right now."

She let the air pressure his trigger finger just slightly before relaxing. She mused idly, more to herself than Harper.

"I could even force you to write a note explaining why you took your own life... I considered this, but I would not want there to be some sort of investigation, though they have never caught me for anything else that I have done here before I would not want them to become lucky. So you will live... For now."

And thing was...thing was, his friends would believe it.

How many times had he held his gun to his own head of his own power?

"Okay. I get it. You're powerful; I'm pathetic," he gasped out, puffs of white mist floating up, hand shaking uncontrollably and a cold sweat prickling all over his body. He felt like he was being squeezed, like he was wearing a shoddy EVA suit, minus the explosive decompression. "What the hell d'ya want? Is this the standard mock-threaten-and-torture, or are you just toying with me before you do me in?"

The shadowy figure began to pace around Harper. Very slowly. One arm across her midsection, and holding the elbow of her other arm which is raised to her face, and a slender finger tapping what would seem to be her upper lip under the silvery shadows.

Silence reigned for an unpleasant length of time as she walked around Harper, circled really. Like a vulture over a dying animal.

"I need your silence."

An icy, malevolent tone in her voice as she stopped in front of him. Her thin hand seizing on his jaw-sharp fingernails digging into his cheek. She leaned in close to his face, whispering nearly through gritted teeth.

"If you ever tell anyone about me... A colleague of mine creates monsters, breeds them from human and animal stock. Monsters called trollocs that feed on human flesh. I will make you envy those who are cooked and eaten while still alive..."

The chill fog of her breath hissed on his cheek as a bright white blade of fire appeared and she held it just over an inch a way from his living eye.

"I would like to burn your eye out now... But I'll wait for that. If I have even the slightest suspicion that you spoke a word about me, or meddled in my plans. You will beg me to let you be fed alive to the trollocs, and then you will thank me for my mercy when I finally let you be eaten alive."

There was another moment of silence now, as Harper considered all she said, while stuck frozen in place.

Finally, he opened his mouth and asked, "Uh, how do they reproduce?"

This was a deciding factor in how this was going to proceed.

Mesaana tilted her head for a moment, before snapping back to normal. The smell of hair burning as the blade of fire began to singe the hair on his eyebrow.

"Irrelevant."

Pulling back from him, the blade of fire vanished as she reached into her dress and pulled out a pencil and paper.

"Now, while you begin to figure out how to convince me that you will be silent, I want you to start writing a note."

Not irrelevant to him. Vague oogie-boogie animal monsters didn't really scare him unless he was going to be having puppies burst out of his stomach.

He'd been mauled before, he'd had monsters burrowing out from his gut, he'd been tortured, beaten, driven insane, tempted by the dark side, held hostage, nearly died of pneumonia, had his parents' throats torn out, had his cousins infested and shot, had a girlfriend turned into a fine bloody mist.

There really wasn't much that could be done to him anymore.

"Do I have to hold my gun to my head the whole time?"

A sickly sweet tone of voice as she loosened the bonds of air around the hand that was not to his gun.

"Yes."

A pause as Compulsion filled her voice.

"Now, I want you to write a suicide note. One that your friends will believe with no kinds of secret codes or anything like that in it. You will in no way attempt to say that this was anything other than your own reasons."

He sighed, sounding very put upon, turning and putting the paper on the flat rock so he could write. "What is it you're trying to do here?" he asked, scribbling away.

i cant do this anymore. im sorry.

i saw my parents. thers this girl who pulls people into her dreams and there own dreams and i saw my parents i saw them and i cant i just cant do this anymore.

i've met death. i'm not skered.

shes pretty hot anyway.

"You want me to keep quiet? Fine. I'll keep my damn mouth shut. I don't know your name and I didn't catch a good glimpse of ya' anyway." He didn't sound afraid and for once in life, he found that he really wasn't all that frightened. A little hyped on adrenaline and not in control of his own body, but it felt distant to him. Unreal.

Or perhaps it was, instead, just a little too familiar.

"That's pretty damn easy to understand, and honestly, I really don't give a shit what evil, zany hijinks you're up to anyway. But if you're trying to get me to cower and wince and beg for mercy and all that crap just to get your egotistic evil jollies, it ain't gonna happen, lady. I'll do what you want, but only 'cause I don't really care if anyone other than me knows who you really are--somebody's bound to figure it out on their own and take you down--and I ain't gonna give you the satifaction of thinking you can control me."

Because it was still his choice. Grovel and cower and beg or die horribly and painfully.

But it was still a choice.

i am sorry i realy am cuz of all i put you all thru. to have dun all that and hav it end lik this...

but i'm not afrade. and if im not afrade then what the hells stoppin me?

i miss my family. ive done pretty well for a pahtetic littel mudfoot you now? why push my luck?

beka u can hav all my cds. leste i can do for the person that savd me. i got to have a real life thanks to you. i got to go out into the stars. i got to know wut it wuz lik to be a free man. ther is no way i culd thank you for that.

trance uve always gided me down the rite path, always seen what way for beka and rev and me to go. im counting on that now. keep looking to the future. keep finding the rite path for beka. she nedes a gud luck charm

There was only a moment's hesitation, as he thought what to write next.

Or at least it looked like he was thinking. What was really happening was that a struggle went on in his head as he tried to change a single word from what he felt compelled to write instead.

im sorry my sparkly golden pixie.

"You kill me and someone's gonna figure it out eventually. You don't kill me, I choose to keep my mouth shut and there's nothing that's gonna make people suspicious. But I ain't doing the groveling thing, and while I have a preference for living, I met Death and she is a royal babe."

Under that veil of silvery shadows, her smile twisted slightly. He was telling the truth, because he was trying to put a brave face on it. Such a man. His death would be more trouble than it was worth, though so very satisfying.

"...Very well. You know the consequences of not keeping quiet."

Reality folded, bent and twisted into a doorway into infinite black. A blackness deeper than even the darkness of deep space. Mesaana stepped through the doorway and reality folded back to normal.

The weaves on his body would unravel eventually.

It was a half hour before the bonds finally released and what he'd remember most about that half hour was the cold, and the feel of freezing metal against his temple.

After that, he finally fell to the ground, shaking.

But it was only from the cold for once.

For once.

After holstering his gauss gun, he dusted the snow off of his cargoes, picked up the soggy note, and started rubbing his arms as he made his way back to the bar.

"Bitch," he muttered to himself grumpily, crumpling it. "Didn't even offer me power and babes."

Once you'd seen one evil overlord, you'd seen 'em all.

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