In the year 2012, a mysterious illness began to sweep the globe. In its wake, those who survived it were left with immensely powerful supernatural abilities.
As the number of people capable of wielding magic powers increased, they began to organize and seize control of the course of history. Using their powers to travel between parallel universes, these mages forge empires of a scale never before seen. And at the center of it all is the Academy, a neutral institution founded for mages to share their knowledge with each other.
Mages struggle against each other to impose their will upon the multiverse, but there is one threat that unites them all together. In recent months, mysterious entities have appeared. These entities wield power far greater than any one mage, and they seem determined to annihilate all of humanity. The mages will have to set aside their differences in order to beat them. The fate of the multiverse depends on it.
Diana figured she'd just be zoning out again, so she was only half paying attention to his words. There were a lot less of them than she thought there would be, so she almost missed the question entirely. Her eyes perked up back towards him and she paused. It wasn't the kind of question she could answer immediately. It was almost strange to think about because listening to him was practically her default state. The only time she didn't was when it was over something especially stupid, like not fighting the dragon. After a moment's thought, she was pretty sure she figured out the issue.
"Do you know what you're doing or what you want? It doesn't look like it anymore. I don't think I've ever seen you so scared or clueless. So get your shit together and maybe I'll feel like I can trust your judgement again."
Post by Vieri di Adatto Isabello on Dec 15, 2018 22:41:33 GMT -7
For as simple as the sentiment was, it hit Vieri like a brick to the head. He had asked for it, but that was about as far a throw from the answer he wanted as someone could chuck it. While he was among the first to fumble together some kind of organization among the mages, he knew it was an effort full of half-measures and things kept together with duct tape. He was running it off of what his father had build, using methods his father had used, reaching for goals his father wanted, and he wasn't even half as good at it. As much as he wanted to blame that on losers not respecting his age, their thoughts didn't always add up to that.
He hadn't ever been so scared and clueless and the reason the words stung was because they took feelings he was trying his damndest to stuff down and jabbed them with a lighter. From other people, he could brush it off as them being assholes to get at him, but.. not from Diana. He didn't want to believe it, he wanted to stuff those worries about flailing around, keeping stuff together only because he could blow shit up, down inside of him. Diana had taken it beyond words to consequences, however, and given those worries weight. All the fears he had regarding her were piled on top. Someone was going to get hurt and it felt as though the last chance he had at stopping that had slipped through his fingers. It was a sense of helplessness. His gut hated it with viscous contempt, but he had no idea what he could do to get rid of it.
Vieri's face fell, and for the length of time he normally designated to shouting his first sentence, he was stuck in a stunned kind of silence. His expression looked at once like he was trying to twist his face hard enough it collapsed inwards and was just a hairpin drop away from beginning to cry.
He was at a loss for words, so he didn't bother trying. Turning away from her, he let out a hardly suppressed yell of anger; one that was quickly overpowered by the thunderclap and cracking of stone as he took it out on the electrical wires they'd stuffed in the walls, flooding them with electricity until they exploded. Bits of debris flew into their current room and out into the next, and by the time the dust settled, a hole sizable enough to drive a car through was left, rimmed with crackling and half-melted wires.
He stuffed his hands in his pockets and found it difficult to take his pained, angry glare higher than her shoes. "Fine, go do whatever the hell. Just fuck off with this 'soul searching' bit, I was hoping out of everyone, you'd at least trust in me." He bit back coldly.
But as he stopped out of the hole he'd put in the wall, he couldn't stop his mind from churning through the questions she'd raised. Even trying to funnel his thoughts and energy into being mad at her only ever brought it back again to what even he wanted from all of this.
She figured something was coming, granted she figured it'd just be a lot of useless shouting that she'd zone out through. Screaming was about the same, but the electricity running around him and the resulting explosion, not so much. It actually got Diana to look up, her chair making a loud thud as she put the two legs that had been in the air back on the ground. It wasn't going to hit her, but it made a damn fine mess of her lab. She'd have to find a new one.
Diana waited a moment before speaking, half to make sure that he wasn't going to rant at her and half to make sure that he had a second to come down enough after that to actually listen to her. This was one of those things he did that she didn't really get. She didn't even know what she said to make him this upset, but it seemed to happen when she was really right about things that he didn't want her to be right about.
"I'm not wrong," she said calmly, clearly not shaken by what just happened. "I don't get it. Why do you keep insisting on doing all this when it makes you so miserable? Just do something else."
Pausing, she looked out at the sky from the hole he created. Her thoughts still hadn't drifted away from where this all started. After a moments thought, she was pretty sure she had the answer. She wasn't sure why it caused such a shift, but looking back, that did seem like the turning point.
"It was blowing up Shanghai wasn't it? That's what made everything start getting weird."
Post by Vieri di Adatto Isabello on Dec 16, 2018 0:25:03 GMT -7
Not wrong, she said. The little voice in the back of his head said of course she wasn't wrong and he knew it, but damn if he didn't want to be angry about it.
His teeth had seen to fusing themselves together in his mouth, and with his gaze and shoulders set forward, he was content to pretend like he hadn't heard her, her sentiment hadn't kicked up another cloud of the thoughts he was trying to bury, and march his way out of the laboratory.
The mention of Shanghai, however, froze him in his tracks. His forward-slouched shoulders jumped like he'd been shocked with his own electricity and he stopped halfway through the blown up wall. He wished people would stop bringing that incident up.
"I don't want to talk about Shanghai." He muttered, still not looking anywhere else but directly ahead.
He could still see some of the remnants of the explosion around him, even after this much rebuilding. The distant buildings were still all gone, areas were still a little too flat, and everything in the heart of the rebuilding efforts, where they were now, were unignoribly new. He forced his foot up and kept walking.
Diana frowned. She could pick up all these weird movements that normal people didn't do because her power was active, but she had no idea what to make of any of them. The only thing she could definitely recognize was that he wanted to leave now that they were firmly talking about him instead of her. She turned her chair back around to the desk she was using and picked up the papers she was looking through again. If he was going to leave she wasn't going to stop him.
"'Kay, we don't have to talk about Shanghai. Or anything. But you know, for someone that was just complaining about lack of trust, you're not giving me any reason to think that you might actually try and fix anything. It's fine, I'll figure out something. You can just bury your head and paperwork and try to ignore everything that's going on like you always do," she waved him out.
It'd take some time for her to figure out what to do because she still had no idea what the problem was. Fortunately, it was clear that she hit the nail on the head with Shanghai though and she could start working from there. Sooner or later she'd find some thread to tug at and unravel until everything went back to normal again.
Post by Vieri di Adatto Isabello on Dec 18, 2018 5:45:13 GMT -7
Diana's parting comment didn't need much of a verbal response when he hesitated yet again to hear it through. He didn't jerk to a stop like before, but he did slow to one. His hands shook at his sides from how tight he was holding his fists. He tried not to look even further away from Diana, but his gaze drifted slight off center, opposite of her. He knew he probably should have just left and ignored her, but something close to morbid curiosity kept him around.
Everything about this hurt, but on top of it it felt as though she was treating him like a child. It was the last thing he needed, for someone else to treat him like he had no idea what he was doing when what he needed was for people to just listen to him. He clicked his tongue and kept walking.
He wanted to go find something to blow up. Maybe some brat from the Academy would try to stop him and he could punch them in the face instead.