• Graded • Boundaries

[Zip]

(Note: we allowed each other mutual control of our characters. There is no godmodding that isn't our intention in this thread. We're thinking of going down to the local scientology centre to learn the secrets against the vile overlord Xenu. Like the covenant between Giovanni and Mewtwo, we're cooperating here - But the movie is called 'Mewtwo strikes back' not 'Mewtwo and Giovanni's Big Adventure where they learn about friendship and shit' It won't last, mate.)

26th Vhalar 717

Zipper and Gangui had initially planned on having weekly debriefings to the week’s events, a sort of summary of events to cap off the old week and kick off the new one; but the chance encounter with a certain mortalborn had brought not one -but two Zippers- and Gangui to a, shall we say, impromptu emergency meeting. They used Robin’s room in the fort, Zipper muttering something about a woman’s privacy and Zapper, her self-christened clone, happily nodding along without a care in the world. Zipper kept throwing the clone dirty side-looks throughout the day, which the clone acknowledged with a smile and a wave. It was clear that she had yet to sleep for at least a day - her eyebags were more visible than usual. She was clearly too paranoid to sleep while the clone hung around her.

Knowing Oberan? There was a personality switch to the clone when she slept that would lead the thing to slit her throat while she rested.

She… she refused to entertain the thought that it would never go away. Dangers aside, the thing was infuriating. It helped an old lady across the street!

“I want the shit stain Oberan found, Mister Gangui,” Zipper said, steadfastly refusing to look at either the man or the clone. The humiliations of the last few trials still stung. Gangui, too, had ran afoul of the creature, a prized sword turned to grass by his command over twisted mischief. “And then I want him lynched, revived, tarred, burned, revived again, and then fed to basilisks, the beasts killed, his body dragged out and stitched together, and then lynched again-”

“I think we should let him go with a stern warning and some nel to start his life over,” Zapper said, beaming like the the sun itself. “We should extend forgiveness to those who wrong us, and find it in our heart to live and let live. Be the change you want to see!”

She gave both the original and the mercenary a thumbs-up each.

“Don’t listen to her. This is a product of Oberan’s vile sorcery.”

[Gangui]

The mustachioed warrior stared at the pile of grass on the simple table. The anger within him was smoldering low in the furnaces of justice that was his soul. This was the second time that a sword had been taken from him. First it was Faldrun, now it was some misbegotten mage. He hated the fact he didn’t have the power to do anything about it in the moment. The sword was magical and now it was ruined. His only defense in the wider world against those more powerful than him.

“He has done me a great wrong,” He couldn’t side with the happy-go-lucky clone, not matter how much logical sense she made. The spiralling conundrum in his head was mind boggling and he didn’t want to admit it. He wanted blood as well, “He deserves to die with the rest, speak no more,” Lynching a man wouldn’t be as easy as the first time, especially without the blind anger to propel him forward. The resentment remained.

Ignoring Zapper, he continued, “What is the proposed plan?”

“He’s a drunk, a whore-monger, an opportunist leeching off nel. I want every brothel pimp, every tavern barkeep, every, every, everyone on alert. Spread the word that a man with the power of the immortals--

The man’s face grimaced in despair, slamming his fist on the table. A few pieces of grass floated away, “Get real Zipper! We don’t have that power!” The gravely voice protruded from deep within. He almost snapped at her own exhibition of blind rage. If they were to settle the score, it would be done with vigilant pragmatism, “You’re the educated one,” he spouted off slightly condescending without regard if his words cut, “Figure it out,” The rebuke was straight to the point, if not, his dull glare into the woman’s eyes would tell her enough.

[Zip]

She had been here for almost 20 trials now, but it was still hard to forget that she wasn’t in Etzos anymore. She had a foundation there; a small network of street-level informants that got her the climate on the street. No Black Guard who wanted to police efficiently rather than soldier blindly could afford anything less than at least the word on the street. Even someone with as much utter, seething contempt for everyone such as herself knew the basic necessity of good ears to the ground.

But now? She was without that power in lonely Foster’s: no badge, no network, no street cred and thus, no word and no official way to coerce it, to bring the power of the Guard into every interaction.

With only two difficult allies that were unstable in their own different ways. Two difficult allies that were two very different kind of fanatics.

Re-establishing that kind of rapport here would take time, with a much different, much more difficult tack to take than back home…

There was that word again: difficult.

Everything had to be a shade of difficult in these petty small town politics. She was starting to miss the hated bureaucracy; Foster’s was inefficient in a completely diametric way.

“Why don’t we throw a party,” Zapper said, breaking the tense silence. “Oberan would be sure to come.” They both ignored her.

“You can throw money at the problem,” Gangui continued, “The Black Guard has deep pockets…”

“They do,” Zipper said. “How far I can reach into them without noise is another thing entirely.”

Gangui jumped the gun, “I won’t short change the sellsword, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“No,” Zipper said absent-mindedly. “Good work demands good pay. You’re a personality around here, Mister Gangui, know any friends you would like to see entered into this-” she waved at his turkey emblem on his tabard, “Company.”

[Gangui]

Thinking on her quandary for a moment produced no facial change in his stoic grimace, now entirely visible with his clean shaven face, “No...They are loyal only to the gold. I could get them to fight for low wages initially, but unless you up the pay quick, they will leave. This is no noble cause you speak of. Evidence for otherwise?” He picked up the grassy remains of his sword and dropped them back down, “This is enough to get them under my banner, but nothing’s free,”

Part of his inner bravado and ego wanted to chime into his conscience now. Despite his down to earth words, a part of him felt that he could rally the people under him. Not as a proxy to her though. He believed once his potential was fully realized that the good peoples of the Landing would rally behind a noble and just cause of his banner. He cast aside these thoughts for now though.

Staring at Zipper, he wandered how she got to where she was at. She didn’t seem the forlorn type, despite her eccentric attitudes. One thing was for certain, she didn’t gain her experience in the field. She wasn’t tested yet. The warrior knew he wouldn’t ride under her banner on merit alone. The contract. Words of the quill written on a simple parchment. That was her power. Nothing to scoff at, but nothing to rally behind either. Conscientious of this he waited to see how she would proceed.

“I think we should recruit the woodland animals,” Zapper said. Zipper reflexively lifted up a hand to punch her, but stopped herself midway. It was clear to Gangui that she had probably tried to assault the clone dozens upon dozens of times throughout the day - and they were all for naught. This was an oddity of cursed magic.

[Zip]

“Let’s start from the ground up,” Zipper said again.

“Put aside revenge for now,” Gangui mumbled as she continued.

“For now,” Zipper said, narrowing her eyes. The thousand ways Oberan would be torn apart clearly flashed in her eyes. “I -we- don’t have the resources to snuff out that creature yet, for all we know he could be out of the city by now, so we need to forge a foundation on which to stand.” She lifted up three fingers. “We need a network,” One finger down. “We need the men.” Another. “We need credibility in the field - you have enough of it, but we’re going for something bigger.”

“This isn’t in my contract!” Gangui cut her off with a firm scowl.

Zipper smiled a tired smile. “You would say no to the raising of your fortunes? The Guard has installed you in the personal capacity of the bodyguard of its representative in Foster’s, true, but I’m looking towards the future. Your Future - Our Future.”

“You extend too far, Zipper, you don’t know me,” Gangui bellowed, clearly pushing back at her ambitious step in the relationship, “I swore no oaths,”

“You did not and you need not, but tell me if the picture I paint is incorrect - you’re tired of the filth in this fair town - the mutants, the committee calling the shots, the beasts of Immortals that could invade on a whim, the pirates on the horizon--”

“Okay, yes, say what you mean woman,” His gaze pierced through her proffered words and his voice with a tinge of impatience that was characteristic of his “too-the-point” attitude.

“I do,” she said undaunted. “I will not be here forever. I am not a native to Foster’s and I have never pretended otherwise. What I build here -the network, your company- whether we decide to pursue our goals further, is yours. Yours to pursue order and justice with, if you see fit - contract or not. There’s a rot, Gangui. There’s a rot and when Rhakros comes, that rot will became a pestilence upon us all.”

“We should get a doctor,” Zapper chimed in.

The man’s eye began to twitch as he did his best to hold himself back, obviously on the verge of exploding and using all his willpower to refrain, “Zapper...please,”

Turning away from the duo, he sighed noisily and stood still, brooding in thought. A mere minute later, he turned back towards Zipper and stepped in close. Too close. Into her personal space, “You do not have the moral high-ground here,” Gangui said coldly, referring to their relationship. His move to shoulder her obviously a move to quench his rage against the ditsy bitch Oberan had conjured, “Your words mean nothing to me,” He stepped in closer, and Zip resisted every fuckin’ urge in her body to push right back, forehead to forehead.

“I will fulfill my contract in honor, but I am not here to form an alliance. All we’ve done since we’ve been here is talk. Can you even fight?”

Do you want to try me, she wanted to say, but she held her tongue. There was no way she could beat an armored warrior without exposing just how much of a mage she actually was. He thought her a item sniffer and an enchanter of blades at best - and she would like to keep it that way. “Not as well as you, I would hazard a guess. Which is why I hired you-”

“I’m trained in conflict resolution by the Black Guard,” Zapper said cheerily. “And I ask that you both move away from each other, take a deep breath, and learn to love.”

Scoffing, Gangui walked away, pacing the small room and throwing his hands up in outrage, “It’s not my fault, this, this, thing, keeps spouting off nonsense. I have no patience for her,”

“You think I want it here? I’m hoping ripping Oberan’s head off will end it too. There’s a whole tavern out here in Foster’s with intensely cheery twins haunting them.”

[Gangui]

The situation was one that Gangui had never encountered before. The trials in the mountains his father put him through to steel his nerves were good for physical trials, but this, this was out of his scope of his usual work. There was no way he would bend to Zipper’s proposition. She had gone way to quickly from revenge to high words of honor. The warrior was not educated like the Black Guard, but he knew bullshit when he smelt it. He knew that noble causes weren’t formed in the secrecy of dark rooms. Nay. They were built upon the field of battle with sword, not quill.

Needing to recompose himself, he breathed heavily for a while before sitting down at the simple table, playing with the grass in his hands. He stared at it weighing his options. He didn’t know what move to make next. He briefly wished Brandon was there to weigh in, but he would only chase the path with the most glory to write his damn songs - and probably flirt with the clone.

“Zipper,” he finally stated.

“That’s her name,” The clone said. “I’m Zapper.”

He looked up at the misbegotten creature with a vision to strangle her where she stood. How could she be so stupid? Ignoring the words again, he continued, “Zipper, drop all the bullshit. At least it is clear that you want me to do more than the contract states,”

“I believe the term we use in Etzos is ‘Exceptional service’ - with exceptional bonuses, I might add.”

“Yes, yes,” He said blankly, “I am not here to start a cause with you though. Name your next move. I have a moral code though, remember that, though not explicit in our contract, and that means more to me than a piece of paper… so what is your move?” Gangui finally gave in, he would uphold his honor in this thing, even if he didn’t like the consequences. He was only bound to her until the 54th after all.

Another piercing glare at her, “Command,” Another cut that summed up the entire conversation in a single utterance. A sign that he didn’t believe in her. A sign that all the titles and words and papers meant nothing to him deep down. Zipper was a fragile little girl who never stepped into the brutal world of battle before, all her knowledge from the tales of men who actually did the deeds.

She needed to test of resolve of true action.

Was she willing to lay it all out as he was?

[Zip]

She narrowed her eyes at him, but held back again. Held back the profanities and the slurs and the colorful metaphors and everything that had wanted to say to him since the first time she saw his stached visage. All she did was hold back here - it was giving her a stomachache, and she couldn’t even eat anymore.

She thought about going to another mercenary - but no, she had already wasted precious trials with this one. And besides, she had already seen the other candidates - Gangui was a learned scholar of philosophy by comparison.

And he was not a lost cause yet.

Not yet.

She lifted up a finger to halt the clone before it said something monumentally, idealistically stupid, and said, “Fair enough, Mister Gangui. Fair enough - Come the next trial, you will hunt the mutant I seek. Robin will be there to back you up. This trial, however, you will acquaint me with some of the personages of Foster’s. You want no part in a network? Fine, but information cannot be chance; it has to be consistency. When word on the street hits the ears of the people, I want to to have already dissected it, analyzed it, and gleaned any truth I have from it,” Big words, ‘tower’ words he would have called it, but she refused to compromise on this end to make him feel more secure.

From the time she pressed her hands to the stone wall of the orphanage and felt the rumble underneath that told her what stone was all about-

From the time in the Seekers when the cold song invaded her and the power of Attunement blossomed in her, and then was cruelly taken away when she saw that… Enormity, that omnishambled monstrosity of a Frequency in the Rhakros jungle-

From the time she turned her first street informant, from the time she turned what should have been a common criminal into a reliable snitch-

Information was her life; her power.

“If it’s not too much trouble outside the proper duties of the bodyguard, of course. In a way, you’ll be protecting me - allowing me a chance to guess at a threat coming at me before it happens.” she said, rolling her eyes on the inside.

[Gangui]

Gangui looked at Zipper, then Zapper (who waved), then Zipper again. Her copious words regarding finding information did not hit him hard, he didn’t care. Show her the town? Not the first time he walked a lady around Fosters either. He knew one thing though that wasn’t being explicitly brought up, the nuance of the conversation finally dawning on him through his dense skull. Robin and him would be fighting her battles in the field while she rambled on with the population.

Mere tools at her disposal.

He needed a sign.

“Verily,” Was his only response. He would submit to it all, except bending the knee.

He made his mind up.

Drawing the dagger from his waist, he put it on the table. He would halt the ebb and flow of the conversation with no subtlety.

“Kill it,” He said coldly, with no force in his voice, “Do it,”

If she was truly the woman she acted to be, she would understand why he said it. There was no need to explain.

He expected her to make excuses, to grumble about hygiene and make please about how it was ‘not the way they did things in Etzos,” He expected her to try to front through it, feigning resolve as she psyched herself up to do the deed, not knowing whether she could even think of taking a life until she plunged the dagger into the clone’s throat. He expected her to shrug and say that was what he was for.

He did not expect her to laugh like that.

[Zip]

Zipper laughed a laugh that was scorn and dark amusement and misery all in one. It was the laugh of someone that was clearly out of practice but had to let it out anyway, and it was the laugh of someone borne from an inside joke that clearly no one else had access to. Gangui stood impassive, waiting for the her to have her fill. Between laughs, she wondered how long before his clearly tested patience would give way.

Best not test it.

But she had, in a way, been given permission to do what she had been wanting to do for the entire meeting. She was thankful for it.

“H-hey,” she called out to Zapper, her dying laughs still muffling her voice. “Z-zapper? C’mere.” The clone dutifully obeyed, and not even before she stopped moving, Zipper took hold of the dagger and plunged it straight into her throat. The clone… did not make a sound. Hell, it didn’t even bleed. There was no gurgle of death nor struggle. It smiled its irritating cheery smile, its eyes still wide and innocent, before falling backwards with a sick thud.

Zipper got in a few more stabs into the throat and chest for good measure. It took everything in her mental power not to follow the dead clone all the way to the ground and stab and stab and stab and stab.

“Fuckin’ satisfied, Mister Gangui?” she said, raising both hands up in a mocking “is this enough?” gesture, whatever pretense of civility forgotten in the heat of a kill.

The barbarous mustachio stood to his feet and stared for a moment without a word. He touched the corpse with his iron-toe, before snatching the dagger from Zipper’s hand and placing it back in his waist. He didn’t say a word though and simply stared at her in the eyes and nodded gravely, acknowledging her for the first time.

Finally he spoke, albeit without the conviction that the Black Guard had come to know him for, “My sword is yours,”

The look she gave him was a veiled one. “Glad to have you,” she said, with an equal amount of conviction.

[Pash Raj'oriq]

Thread Rewards

I love that Zapper is basically Pinky Pie from My Little Pony. More or less. Very great job writing your opposite, Zipper. A common enemy unites the most interesting of people, and I enjoyed Gangui’s attempted negotiations in order to deal with the problem that is Oberan.

Gangui

Points

XP:
15 | These points cannot be used for magic.

Fame:
N/A

Loot

N/A

Injuries + Overstepping

N/A

Knowledge

Skill Knowledge:
Politics: Knowing the reach of your influence.
Negotiation: Bringing things back down to reality.
Politics: Sellswords cost money, good ones need a motive
Discipline: Withholding anger from stupidity
Negotiation: Contracts need to be explicit
Discipline: Upholding one’s personal honor.
Intimidation: Uttering a single word for terrifying emphasis
Politics: People are users or the used
Leadership: Demanding action from a superior

Other Knowledge:
PC: Oberan
Oberan: Great magician
Oberan: Turned Gangui’s sword to grass
Oberan: A whore-monger and opportunist Zip says
Zipper: Zapper is a clone begotten from Oberan’s magic.
Zipper: Wrathful at Oberan
Zipper: Wants revenge against a Oberan
Zipper: Shows a lack of experience
Zipper: Desires power and influence.
Zipper: Shows her motives openly
Zipper: Killer

Zipper

Points

XP:
15 | These points cannot be used for magic.

Fame:
N/A

Loot

N/A

Injuries + Overstepping

N/A

Knowledge

Skill Knowledge:
Politics: Coming to terms with an unfamiliar political landscape
Negotiation: Asking for service beyond the contract
Intimidation: Sudden, uproarious laughter
Intimidation: A sudden act of violence
Intelligence: Every local information network begins with the first contact
Intelligence: A friend of a friend of a friend
Discipline: Withholding anger from annoyance
Discipline: Staying awake for trials because a magical clone borne of Deific halfbreed sorcery is stalking you and may or may not slit your throat in the night and may never ever disappear
Blades (Dagger): A straight stab to the throat
Blades (Dagger): Consecutive stabbing to ensure death

Other Knowledge:
Oberan: Made a clone of you call Zapper
Gangui: A big fan of Zapper
Gangui: Open to help you get acquainted with the locals
Gangui: Pig-headed stubbornness before contracts
Gangui: Not yet a lost cause for the project in Foster’s
Gangui: Has mercenary friends who could help - for a good price
Gangui: Unwilling to move too far beyond the terms of the contract
Gangui: Demanded a kill as a test of character
Gangui: Oberan turned his sword to a literal blade of grass

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