trans_9 | Hey, it's that void between worlds again [Open]

"That sounds pretty interesting, actually!" Maybe a normal person would find it odd or threatening to have their senses taken over? "I'd like that, if you feel up to it sometime. Somewhere not here, of course," he added with a look around the obs deck. Whatever it entailed it seemed it probably ought to be just a little less public.

"Oh, I've ended up naked and covered in horrific substances more times than I can count. In the course of my adventuring! Though some parties, I hear, can get pretty wild when the wine starts flowing... but I never get invited to those parties because I'm too busy wading neck-deep through felhound poop looking for some idiot goblin's keys."

"Your senses...not so odd. Honestly, it's much like if you were in this place's 'sensorium'. I can duplicate effects like that (in your head, of course). As for your voluntary motor controls? That's far more of a (terrible, horrible, scarring) threatening feeling."

She crinkled her nose and frowned in disgust at the plethora of fluids he'd seemed to have swam around in. "Your track record makes me very glad that there were very few missions where I was needed on the field."

"I'd rather not do that again," he said with a painfully distinct memory of the Arathi Basin cliffs -- specifically, his body hurling itself over the edge of one, plummeting to what HAD to be certain death on the jagged rocks below. "I've been through that one too many times. I have had priests look through my eyes, they have a spell can do that, but I never thought I'd have the chance to do that. So I'm game. I trust you!"

Of course, being able to invoke period of absolute immunity to all malevolent forces went a long way to making trust easy to extend... but he DID trust her.

"Er, I'm sorry. My mind probably isn't a terribly nice place to be in sometimes."

Painfully self-aware, that statement, as none of the rest had been up to that point. Sad and carrying with it the hint of horrors.

"Nothing to worry about, I assure you. I would never puppet someone against their will. It would make me too much like my (batshit insane) brother and I've spent the better part of my life avoiding that," she said with a deep-set frown.

"But it's more than fine, really! You're not psychotic or delusional, (which are very frightening places to peer into) your experiences are just exceedingly different from what I'm used to." She paused and furrowed a flaxen eyebrow.

"More like getting glimpses in the mind of a suprahuman. But since you are 'Crusader Do-good' (never going to get tired of calling you that), it really shouldn't be a surprise to me. You pretty much are the definition of a 'superhero' for your world, right?"

"You'd say that even if you would, wouldn't you -- oh right! The no-lying! Unless you were lying about that, but I really don't think you were." Just hypotheticals and ponderings of how an evil person might behave in her position. Towards Mindfuck herself he didn't hold a hint of suspicion.

"I wouldn't say that," he said, a bit embarrassed from the flattery. "Azeroth has lots of skilled adventurers. I wouldn't say all of us are unambiguously good guys, but we generally tend to share goals. I mean, when everywhere is in danger of falling to the Scourge, you kind of want to beat the Lich King no matter what, right?"

"Oh, that may be true but I could say the same for Earth. Any suprahuman can put on a colorful (and incredibly tacky) get up, go fight crime and call themselves a superhero. Sure, you don't have to have the best intentions (which comprise a good deal of them) in mind to become a cape, but it's easy to see when someone is actually doing good for good's sake rather than for the name, fame, fortune or just because it's better than the alternative."

She tapped her chin with a well-maintained finger. "(I'm just thinking, here...) Something tells me that that's probably not the case for you."

Her descriptions of colorful and tacky outfits brought to mind some things he'd seen (http://i291.photobucket.com/albums/ll305/chaoswolf1982/WoWstuff/outlandclownsuit.jpg) back in Outland, which made him smirk.

But when it came to reasons?

The fall of Silvermoon. An army of the undead, lead by the fallen prince turned death knight, Arthas Menethil. Fire. A long blackened streak cutting across the land. Elven people fleeing en masse, less than one in ten escaping. Corpses hurled into the walls, splattering the city streets, littering the burning woods.

Searing pain as the magical energy from the Sunwell guttered out, leaving the elven people, even the memory-Mar, gasping in agony like addicts in withdrawal.

A funeral. His sister, dead, her body never found.

I will take on all the pain in the world, if it spares others from it.

And despite all that, out loud he said, with a casual cheerfulness so inconsistent and out of touch with those inner thoughts that it might very well be scary, "Just trying to make the world a better place, you know."

Her smile faltered a bit as she watched the memories pass like a film. As usual, though they were the thoughts hidden and squirreled away and in his case, those which contradicted their current state, she couldn't quite keep herself from viewing.

Never had she witnessed casualties on such a grand scale. The destructive aftermath, those remaining but still caught in the grasps of suffering. It was sometimes difficult viewing such things; inside one's mind the sounds, smells, touch- everything was as vivid as if it were happening at that moment in time.

She couldn't help but regard him with a sympathetic smile.

"Yes, it certainly looks that way. In which case it's very disheartening that you had to end up here out of everywhere (assuming there was somewhere else to go, other than dead). Almost makes me think you have some hidden secret to remaining jovial."

"Oh, it's nothing that new." Mar shrugged, sincerely unconcerned by what had transpired, at least as it related to him. "Disasters happen all the time, but we generally seem to set things right eventually. I don't need a secret to staying cheerful so long as I can keep bonking things to fix the world!"

Or maybe the secret was simply the gulf, the sheer disconnect, between those inner thoughts and what floated on the surface of his consciousness. That simply wasn't psychologically normal.

"Besides," he said, pleased that he'd gotten what he considered the perfect opportunity to do some of that earlier-promised flirting, "from what I see, this ship apparently has a very cute girl or two!"

Oh yeah, that was a winner!

She crossed her arms and shook her head slightly, an amused brow raised. His idea of a 'disaster' was far, far from what most people normally considered a disaster. What happened at the Capeys was a disaster and there were no casualties. What happened in San Antonio was a disaster...and that? A few capes dead. No, what she saw was a full scale, cataclysmic, fuckery that didn't ever seem like it could be 'set right eventually'.

Mindfuck assumed that over time, some could learn to live with those sort of things. But him? Well, it was just a tiny bit eerie that he could think such things and show no response towards them. His cognisphere looked normal from what she could tell, though.

"Hrm. Maybe all those (brutal) beatings to the head lulled you into a sense of peace. I suppose I'll have to try that out one of these days and it'll save me time on tweaking my emotional responses."

She snorted at his comment and shook her head, a lopsided smile adorning her face. "Shameless. It's actually kind of adorable in a 'not trying too hard' sense. I'm sure the one 'other' cute girl would appreciate it, too, though from what I've seen this ship is a veritable convention of 'alien hotties' (as the ever articulate Major Havoc would have said)."

"Oh, probably! That's the going theory, anyway. That I've been hit over the head by so many creatures of such surpassing power that I'm nuts." He played it off as a joke... but really, he knew he was damaged, in some way. Not something he admitted to, but... the knowledge was there.

"Tweaking your emotions?"

Whatever damage he had wasn't readily apparent on the surface, to her.

"Yes, tweaking my emotional responses with my psychic abilities. It's the only reason I'm not a raging, sobbing, wholly depressed, wreck right now like some of the others who woke up like we did. I've had to use it plenty of times in the past to keep calm in a (seriously fucked) dangerous situation, or remaining the voice of reason (when I want to just break them or force it on them because it would be so much simpler, but then I'd be...)."

She paused, her eyebrows furrowing and her lips tightening in annoyance. "(Shit. Hate this darn unfiltered thoughtstream.)"

That... was kind of sad, honestly, and Mar couldn't help but feel a little bad for her. "I can understand why it'd help to keep yourself calm, but not allowing yourself to feel sadness..."

He chose to ignore the part about breaking or forcing, since she clearly hadn't intended to think that to him, and instead offered a sympathetic smile. "I don't know if you should keep yourself from being sad. Sadness and pain can become strength and resolve. And you need to feel the bad, to feel the good properly, too. So..." He shrugged, spreading his hands. "It's probably forward of me, but if you ever let yourself feel all that, you don't have to feel it alone."

"Oh, I wouldn't say I don't let myself feel sadness. I felt plenty when I was on the Space Station, but in certain situations I'd prefer to be somewhat level-headed. Wrapped up in my own grief and despair, I would probably lose a grip on myself and I might (most assuredly) unknowingly lash out at someone with my psychic abilities. Or, angered at having to deal with the babbleroar on the ship in the midst of my mourning, I forcefully try to mute (mentally disfigure) some of the owners of those voices."

The woman shook her blonde head and crossed her arms over her chest. "The point is, I can't really risk letting myself go on a mental breakdown because I already know how (very, very) unstable I would be. (Especially since my thoughts are making me sound like a mental case. Sigh.) I would be unwittingly putting others at risk."

She smiled at first, then regarded him with a skeptical look. "Maybe you're being a little forward, but appreciated all the same. Besides, could you imagine how (disturbingly) pitiful a sobbing woman with no eyes or tongue would look and sound like?"

"I don't think more 'disturbingly' pitiful than a normal woman, really," he said, quite truthfully. Grief, pain, loss, and misery came to all races -- from elves to draenei to dwarves to dragons. The gross physical variations across race seemed to make minor ones meaningless. "Hopefully you can find a quieter place somewhere to let yourself go a little. As for me..."

He tapped the side of his head with his mailed knuckles, grinning, as he deliberately brought to mind memories of fighting a shadow priest -- a human swathed in utter darkness that Mar's charger galloped towards, the paladin shouting a war cry as he raised a massive sword. In response, the priest turned and with a gesture and spoken word blasted Mar's mind with the force of will and shadow, then unleashed a beam of black energy which unerringly bridged the gap between the two combatants to flay at his mind. "I'm used to it. And if I know what you can do, it's not unwitting! So don't worry about me."

He'd won that fight, by the way, having exploited the priest's general weakness to swords to the face. Then he'd stolen a flag for reasons that surely made sense in context.

It was the lack of any tears or being able to form coherent words or sounds that got to her. It wasn't a pretty sight; not one she was looking forward to repeating anytime soon, anyways.

She laughed and shook her head, "So what you're saying (at least my interpretation) is that it's fine if I unwind near you because if I (accidentally, really!) psychically lash out, it's not going to bother you much? Crusader Do-Good, you must be a masochist."

Mindfuck paused, a curious brow raising. "And I'm really going to need to know the context of that flag deal."

"A masochist?" A masochist with qualifications. If pain had to happen, and it often did, better he endure it than anyone else. "No more than anyone else who'd try to offer comfort and support to someone else. That always means taking on some of their pain and suffering. If you do it a little more directly, well, that just makes it simpler?"

At least maybe he can cheer her up with some jokes? Not that she isn't relatively cheery now, but he can't help but feel there's a greater integrity to a legitimate cheer as opposed to one purposely self-generated.

"Oh, that's... a war game, basically. The Alliance have a flag, the Horde has a flag, and whoever captures the other team's flag repeatedly has won the game and the valuable resources of Ashenvale! At least until the other side scrapes together the resources necessary to launch a counteroffensive."

She simply stared at him, unmoving, for several long, silent moments. Her lips curled inward and her eyebrows raised slowly in disbelief. Then she laughed; a light, amused, incredulous laugh that slowly faded away even as she began 'talking' again.

"Capture the Flag? Your war game is Capture the Flag? I remember playing that game when I was eight!" She raised up a hand as if signaling for him to 'wait' and then proceeded to laugh again.

"Okay, okay. So...you play Capture the Flag to earn resources for your faction and...(imagining a bunch of serious-faced armor-clad people chasing after some fellow with the most stoic look on his face as he's running) since it's a war game i'm sure there's more beatings and bludgeoning involved and all but...wow."

She crossed her arms over her chest and nodded her head. "That just may be the greatest thing I've heard in a long time."

"One of them!" Mar clarified, not minding her laughter at the expense of the ongoing, brutal struggle over Warsong Gulch one bit. Because let's face it, she pretty much had the image down exactly.

"But there! Now you're a little less down than you were before!" He pumped his fist. "That's another glorious victory for Crusader Do-Good!"

"I'd say. You're actually pretty good at this, hm?" she questioned, raising a flaxen brow.

"Thanks, Maridian. It's not often I'm the one pushing my emotional problems on people (and between Elyssa and Theresa, I'd never get the chance.)"

"Pushing my narrow elven ass, I had to drag it out of you, and I probably wouldn't have managed that if you could throttle better," he said, still feeling pretty good about it all. "My real strength is not dying despite being hit by things that really ought to cause that, but I sure don't mind finding some success in other areas like this one."

Of course, she couldn't name names without him wondering who those people are, even if he didn't do so out loud.

She raised an eyebrow at his words but regarded him with a wry smile. "Of course. What, did you think it would be that easy (It never is!)?" There was a pause in which she considered his unasked question.

"Elyssa was an associate member of the Superhomeys; we became good friends. Theresa was my ex, who just so happened to loathe (really that's an understatement) Elyssa. They both (surprisingly) had more issues than I did."

Ex? Hmm, that may have put his flirtatious intentions on awkward ground... but she'd encouraged him, so no time to start feeling weird. "Oh no, it was easier than I thought. Thank you, unfettered access to your stream of conscious!

"Though," he added, "I guess you would have fewer self-perceived issues if you can just poke your own mind to mitigate them, right?"

She laughed in reply and shook her head slowly. "Oh yes, it's much easier on both ends, I'd say. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or bad, though. It kind of removes most (all) of the mystery. But yes, I have," she said, answering his question.

"It was kind of a necessity for my own sanity (and we already had enough 'superchicas' with plenty of issues on the Superhomey's team). Honestly, I could have done the same with them, but then I think I would be treading (quite dangerously) on manipulative grounds."

Now it was his turn to chuckle. "Removes the mystery? Just the opposite! I don't know what you will do or think or say to things any more than I would any other girl I randomly met in a living ship after our worlds were destroyed. But I get to actually know instead of trying to figure out what you really think and if you're just saying things to make me go away or look better or something! It's GREAT!"

And he sincerely meant this! Deep down, Mar actually liked people, and he could think of a few people whose sudden twisted reveals after months of friendship had cut deep and painfully.

"You're right, though, fixing people's problems WOULD be a bit over a line. Unless they asked you to, but that still seems extreme even then."

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._. Sorry! I somehow missed this tag D:

I think LJ dropped some notifs!

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