towerofanimus | You were hamming it up as the tragic heroine

Entry tags:

You were hamming it up as the tragic heroine

Characters: Ocelot and Sephiroth
Setting: Floor 88
Format: Starting prose, feel free to switch
Summary: After Ganon vanishes, two villains out for themselves meet. Nothing can go wrong.
Warning: Ganon is "dead", all fear the new evil overlords?

Ganon was gone.

It was almost a shame. The alliance was sure to collapse now, and that meant that Ocelot's pretense of being on Ganon's side was useless. It had lasted a long time, she supposed. Long enough that she had grown tired of hiding in the shadows, lurking just out of sight. As much as she favored Nesir, the girl seemed loyal to Ganondorf. Revealing her plans to overthrow him, to overthrow Ruana and the other administrators and prevent Ganon from ever getting his way if he was to return would be a mistake.

No, instead she would seek out the one man she trusted the most in this entire tower. Sephiroth was less predictable than Richtofen, but she knew him well enough to know that he was so consumed by self interest that any chance he had to further his goals would be taken. She was the same way, naturally. The two people from the alliance that had the most to gain from Ganon's disappearance would be an interesting pair. A dangerous pair, one that would not last.

As long as she could predict when Sephiroth's betrayal would come, it didn't matter.

She waited for him in the smoky bar, almost unblinking.

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There was always something heavier in the air, Sephiroth thought, whenever he considered this floor. Maybe it was just the illusion that the smoke made it have, or the presence of the pool table like it were for some reason a significant object - placed as it was in the center of the room.

Not being one for either of the things a bar or pool table could offer, it's little wonder why Sephiroth had never before really set foot onto this floor. It was one of most of the floors of this block, that he'd quickly pass a look over the threshold from the stairwell on his way through to other places. This block was rather avoided by him for it's vast number of power-limiting floors. Something which, even with his real powers now pretty much settled, could still limit him.

Not this floor though. As noted within moments of passing onto it from the stairwell, as Sephiroth searched out Ocelot and approached her. Having verified her note with a quick sweep of the 1st Dormitory floor by way of a diversion, he hadn't come right away. Also it had given him an effective way to lose his retrieval-shaped shadow. Indeed, there were things to be discussed.

"My apologies for keeping you waiting."

All silver, black leather, violet collar and green eyes peered at Ocelot from a close, but cautious distance.

When Sephiroth arrived, she regarded him quietly for a moment. leaning against the bar for a long moment. It was a shame that this bar didn't have drinks most of the time, though she would have probably have avoided drinking anything served to her even so. "No bother," she said slowly. "I wasn't waiting long."

Her follower was nowhere to be seen herself, and she was positive that it would remain that way long enough for them to discuss the matter of Ganondorf vanishing.

Even if the bar had stocked 'safe' alcohol to drink, Sephiroth would never partake in it. Not only through personal preference, but the pointlessness such an endeavor held for him. That one time that he had considered to drink in the Tower and a inebriated small child had stupidly yelled in his face.

He slips in to the bar beside Ocelot, forever carefully observing her.

"Well then, where to begin."

"The alliance will collapse, if it has not begun to already," she said carefully. Ganondorf's power had been the only thing keeping them together to begin with. He had been a threat to the rest of alliance and she was certain that Ganon himself had known it.

"Even so, we cannot continue on by ourselves. We have little time and I don't trust Pandora. They're too intent on doing things to make sure that no one dies, even if it costs all of us our lives in the end."

Sephiroth would have questioned that principal. In his opinion at least, Ganondorf's power had not been the cement that had kept any of the members of the Evil Alliance together. Ganondorf's vision, to take over the Tower, had for one reason or another struck at the interest of a few similarly-minded individuals. Not least his own.

"The alliance has dwindled significantly, regardless of Zo's loss of hold on Ganondorf." He commented smoothly, but equally carefully. Posture as straight as he could make it.

"It would serve them all right." Sephiroth knew very little about the other groups involved with the recent uprising of the retrievals, but imagined Pandora might indeed have something to do with it. They never did make it easy for Sephiroth to get into the position he needed to. "Only those capable, will be coming out of this alive...to whatever extent you might call this living."

"Indeed," Ocelot said, nodding slowly. "With so many members gone, it does make organization easier." There were still people floating around, but now Ocelot had no reason to go after them. She was a loner, it was what she preferred. But with no direction in the tower now, she was going to get bored.

Boredom was not something she would tolerate.

"Of course. But if Ruana would have her way, we would spend eternity in our dead worlds. That won't do. Pandora needs to be dealt with. We can't let them continue to be the largest force in this place. Ganondorf never did find a way to splinter their group."

Boredom is the exact reason why Sephiroth filled his days with could-be considered pointless training before, 'irrelevant' study when the collar fluid research was all done with. Just as before, for reasons, of course - his supervision couldn't be relaying to the Administration any obvious change in Sephiroth. That was vital.

More recently such time has been dedicated to honing his powers as they have steadily been becoming more real - in the instance that he could get a firm grasp on them that is.

"I haven't heard from any of my contacts within Pandora, for a long time. Whether this is a cause for concern in my sources, or if they have simply petered out is a mystery. Souls continue to drop out of the Tower at an increased rate.

"Though I have reason to believe they have aligned themselves with the retrieval uprising. If one could even call it that."

Sephiroth paused to examine Ocelot's face more closely, searching intently for any hint of ulterior motive in her coming here to speak to him. In her implication with regards to other groups within the Tower, something he would have been naive not to have already suspected.

"Sounds as though you might know something I don't."

She waved her hand.

It was mostly speculation at this point, but it did make her suspicious. "I believe they have," Ocelot said carefully. "That chipped unit, Aria, she calls herself, has created a secret room within the tower." In the case that anyone was listening in unseen, she would leave it at that. "There's nothing interesting in it. Yet."

"I believe that girl has something planned. We have four months left. Time is running out. She knows more than she lets on and she appears content in only letting those she trusts in on it."

To Sephiroth at least, Aria and her enabled, chipped collar units had succeeded in drawing a line in the sand. Them or the Admins. This was a line which Sephiroth didn't want to put himself on either side of, having heard Aria's goals for himself. So like Pandora to have influenced change in the direction he didn't want to go.

They used this new hidden floor, he supposed, as a start to 'rally' those residents that would fight for them in this war. A war that Sephiroth wanted no part of but was bound by the results as well, still being a resident of the Tower after all. The whole thing strikes him as untidy and only drawing attention away from the real problem; they were all going to run out of power before an alternative could be found.

As such, he was much less careful in changing the tone of his voice in case of surveillance that couldn't be seen.

"Yes, I can agree with that. The purpose behind such a room does nothing but wave red flags to me."

This wasn't what they were here to discuss, however, and so Sephiroth reverted the conversation back the reason she had summoned him here. He slid calmly onto the nearest bar stool to Ocelot and continued.

"So you would suggest for us-" He referred to himself and Ocelot, particularly but she could take that however she liked. "-branch out to others?"

"We can't do this with just the two of us," Ocelot agreed. She'd never turn to Pandora for help. She didn't trust them, but a few outliers still remained within the Tower, both former allies of Ganondorf and people who had long since defected from his side.

"But I wouldn't know where to begin." Nesir needed to be watched over. Maybe she would come over to their side now. It would be useful to have her on their side, but the only other person that she can think of is Richtofen, who she doesn't trust at all.

Sephiroth meanwhile fixed his gaze on some random point of the bar. It almost knotted his unreal stomach three times over, the thought of him now stepping forward as some figurehead as Ganondorf had done. He appreciates well the need for -especially among more human types- for their leadership and direction; but at the same time is this really his calling? He who would sooner put an end to all of humanity and effectively start again?

"You aren't the only one." He commented eventually, after a moment of that awkward silence again while he thought. At least he might keep this option semi-open for the time being? Nesir too, easily came to his mind. She would need to be told soon, if she hadn't also found out already.

Sephiroth would rather pitch Richtofen off the roof of the Tower into some bottomless Abyss, than go crawling to the man for any alliance now.

Edited (tenses are bad this week I'm sorry! ) 2014-02-23 00:45 (UTC)

"Nesir," Ocelot said finally. She would stave off her desire to watch the world burn long enough to save this one and return to her own. "I've down it with only one other before. With Nesir on our side, we'll have plenty of firepower in the time we have left."

Why did she want a mass of soldiers at her disposal? There would be time for that later, maybe, but not now. Certainly not in the Tower. It seemed most people would rather side with Pandora or no one at all, and Ocelot certainly didn't want useless followers at her beck and call.

Better Ocelot than Sephiroth, naming the young girl who was on both of their minds at the same time. Though Sephiroth knows that Ocelot doesn't bear any such power to have pulled it out of his thoughts, or at least she didn't before now. He half-scowls at the next thought that passed his conciousness-

They're all so very human.

Ocelot and Nesir both, under any other circumstances wouldn't be given a second thought by Sephiroth due to this reason. How his outlook had been mutated during his stay here, Sephiroth needed to be careful that the Tower wasn't able to change him in ways that would render his continued existence pointless.

"You care for Nesir-" He led the conversation in that direction. It's more of a statement of fact than a question, but Sephiroth felt the need to verify this with Ocelot first.

It was not an easy thing for Ocelot to admit. She hesitated, though it was marked only by her clenching her fist briefly. "It is not easy for a woman to rise high in the military where I am from," she said slowly. "There were many who looked at me and said I couldn't do it. Idiots, all of them. Most of them are dead now, some by my own hands."

Big Boss had been the first one to see her as something more than just a woman, even when they had been enemies. "In my country, women have sometimes been considered superior snipers to men. Capable of laying low in wait. More patient than their American male counterparts. I'm used to making people fear me."

She brushed a hand through her hair. Even in the time in the tower, she had kept it cut short. "Nesir and I may come from very different worlds, but she and I are not so different. We merely have very different 'masters.'"

It was pleasing that the moments hesitation reaped it's reward. Sephiroth listened, intently as ever to Ocelot as she recounted some of her story. Allowing himself to blink naturally at intervals as she explained.

However the revealed fact about Ocelot being involved with the military on her World itched at incomplete memories within Sephiroth, with regards to his own past, he was careful not to allow this slight discomfort to color his expression at all. All in all, he understood where she was coming from and acknowledged such with a light nod.

"Both of you soldiers, fighting for different causes."

Sephiroth rather casually flicked his head one way, removing a few stray strands of silver which had started to invade his vision before continuing.

"I had something of a similar life, once. But said 'masters' were not in my best interest. I started fighting, for my own objectives. It's been that way ever since."

One way or another, it seemed where himself and Ganondorf had their similarities which had allied them - he had even less in common with those the troll king's departure had left behind. He wondered, silently, how he could really now begin to align himself with Nesir and Ocelot more when they were so very different.

"Good," she said. It had taken her far too long to start fighting for herself. Even now, she had to pretend to be on the side of her former masters, but she had no loyalty now. Since it had been well over a year since she had first entered the tower, it made keeping her loyalty to ADAM that much harder, anyway.

"Try and take over the Tower, if you'd like," Ocelot said slowly, looking up at Sephiroth. She knew that conquest had been Ganondrof's goal. If it was the same for Sephiroth, she couldn't really care. All she really wanted was to get back to her own world and have it descend into chaos.

"I cannot say for sure how much help I shall be, but I don't care. You can make them all suffer."

She didn't care about Pandora, she didn't care about the people in the Tower who weren't involved. There was too little time left for them to do much at all. If she couldn't fix things in her own world, at lest she could give the support to someone who probably wanted to cause as much destruction as her.

It was a point in Ocelot's favor at least, that she didn't press him for more details that would be nearly painful to recall. As much as Sephiroth frequently visited the 5th Floor to ensure he never forgot about his Planet, never mind it's destruction, the fact remained - he'd failed there. He was failing here as well, with no clear way to know what remained for him on the other side.

Even not on Gaia, even without Jenova, he was still failing her. That hurt more than he would ever admit even to himself much less other people. Even more perhaps, than the clawed at remains of his self-control.

"I was never interested in the Tower. My -scope- is much wider-ranging." He informed simply. Though really, he'd have to start somewhere. Ganondorf would have provided that first step up that he needed. Without that now, he'd have to find another way.

"If suffering will prove to be the key, you have my promise that I will not hesitate in that."

But at this point, in truth for a long time, Sephiroth had been without very much of a plan. Until recently it had been obvious that he lacked the means to do anything about his predicament, but perhaps now he could expand on the real power that he had unlocked. His power, those that Mother's eradication from all planes of existence had not managed to purge from his core.

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You were hamming it up as the tragic heroine

Prose is perfectly fine by me

Sorry about the delay

no problem whatsoever!

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