(mostly open) oh this love would kill me

[entreats]

Who: Ange, Ruby, and you!
What: Ruby and Ange's wedding, and all their CR is invited!
When: Late October
Where: The rebuilt Clockhouse

Content Warnings: Semi-irresponsible weapon usage.




Sometime around the beginning of October invitations would have started to be sent out to the various people in Trench Ange and Ruby know - announcing the two girls' wedding at the end of the month.

When the day itself comes, people will find the location - the newly rebuilt Clockhouse, which some of the invitees may have helped rebuild in the first place - tastefully decorated. Some of the house's stranger features have been covered up by decorations in red and gold, mostly taking on the shapes of roses and butterflies all over the place.

Comments

[manyone]

She was a Voyager, permitted to travel between fragments, and the Witch of Miracles. She and Lambdadelta, the Witch of Certainty, played these little games to amuse themselves, because the one thing that a Witch, who is immortal, cannot abide is to be bored. Lambdadelta was my patron, the one who granted me my own identity as a Witch, thanks to the certainty of my plans for revenge. Bernkastel is a cold, cruel creature. It's said she was herself once a girl trapped for a hundred years upon a game board, a hundred years of earnestly yearning for a miracle is what elevated her to become a Witch.

[ She flicks her pipe with her hand, scattering sweet tobacco smoke about her. ]

She was the patron of my opponent, Battler. There is little else I know of her, I am afraid.

[hauntedsavior]

[anna nods along, trying to piece everything together. she doesn't know how ΛΔ plays into it, but she doesn't necessarily care. because all of this just sounds even more complicated than what she'd already known, and if she's honest, beatrice is a much less compelling storyteller than sayo. so when the golden witch stops talking, she drops her arm to her side and sips from her glass like she's the one who had been giving all this information.]

Magic. [a beat. it's not as funny when she does the same joke.] So this whole... thing, whoever was actually there on Rokkenjima, you're all just chess pieces for some unknowable third power? 'Cause I gotta say, B, I didn't expect that to be where I relate to you guys.

[manyone]

[ Sorry, she's used to talking to Battler. He wants the facts, not a good story, usually. That and she just likes to be a little long winded. Beatrice scoffs softly. ]

You could say that. And Ange is ultimately the smallest and least of all the pieces on the board, at the very end. Or she was. I think that might change, in the future, but I can't be sure.

We were all there on Rokkenjima. And we all weren't.

[ Beatrice smirks. ]

Ah, you relate to us? How wonderful that we can elicit a touch of your sympathy.

[hauntedsavior]

[anna rolls her eye.]

Don't need to relate to you to sympathize with all the tragedies crashing up against each other. Ange and Sayo and now you are all telling me things that paint what is, I think, the single most miserable picture I've ever heard of what happened on that island.

[no judgment or anything, certainly not from anna. she knows that everyone has a lot of complicated garbage in their lives and she is trying very hard to reconcile all of it; she's heard about the creation of beatrice, but she's also heard about what ange had to live through because of beatrice. it's hard.]

Nah, I'm just saying. [she raises a hand up to her shoulder level, palm out.] Hey, how's it going, Anna Amarande, pawn granted unimaginable powers in an unknowable shadow war. [and she raps her chest, being sure not to rumple her tie.] Same for the girl living inside me.

[manyone]

It was a miserable place. I was the manifestation of a curse that began long before Sayo or Ange were born and finally ended only with that fateful night.

[ Is Beatrice getting meta? A little. It's kind of her thing, after all. She raises her pipe and takes a lingering puff on it, idle. Then she stretches out a hand and clasps Anna's to give a gentle shake and a dignified curtsy. ]

A pleasure, Miss Amarande. I didn't know you had another girl living inside of you! Fascinating.

[hauntedsavior]

I don't make a big deal out of it.

[if she wanted to make things more comfortable for herself, she'd start smoking right now off her own cigarettes, but she elects not to. she's also, of course, lying about making a big deal out of A2. lots of choices being made here.]

If you hang out around the right people here, you might run into a couple of us with more souls than our bodies were built to handle. It's not as normal as it is where I came from, but there's still a few of us. Feels a little bit like you might get what that feels like.

[manyone]

I do. A little. I do not contain many souls, though I am made up of more than one. I am the Witch, Beatrice. I also hold in my heart, at least a little, the poor girl Sayo.

[ Beatrice says it quietly, a wan smile on her face. ]

I am Beatrice as she would be if she were given true form, one might say. Since in the so-called "reality" of Rokkenjima, there was only Sayo and no Beatrice. Rather I exist in the space of the unknown. Was it a witch's curse? Or was it just humans, doing the dull and normal things they have always done, murdering each other over wealth and power? No one can ever really know except the people who were there that night, and so I hold the truth. Sayo holds the truth. We are possibilities.

[ Beatrice's eyes close. ]

I do miss my sister. I hope she is content in the ocean, where ever she is on those currents.

[hauntedsavior]

[she shouldn't be feeling the way she feels towards beatrice right now. all she knows for sure about beatrice is that she's made ange's life miserable. but it's... well, it's the same position she'd been put in with sayo, isn't it. of course it is. anna doesn't visibly sigh, but her body slumps a little. it doesn't hit the worst until the last line.]

I'm sure she's doing great out there. God willing, she's drinking her girlfriend's blood and learning about prostates on a tropical beach out there in the sea. [she knows that might be surprising to say and is anticipating another one of those ear-splitting shrieks. better cut it off.] Away from all this murder, whether it's human nature or not. Which I'm pretty sure it isn't.

[manyone]

[ Anna's remark does bring forth a faint cackle--though it's cut off before it gets too far. Beatrice shakes her head. ]

I don't know that I would call it human nature. Just that humans are short-sighted and can be selfish--gold is one of those magical things that enchants them and blinds them to things like cooperation and family. I've seen it happen time and time again.

[hauntedsavior]

Me too, dude, what's up. [she raises her glass in a mock toast, but doesn't drink from it.]

But there's some good things to gold, too, you know? I've seen Ange do some cool shit with golden butterflies. I assume it's related to you somehow, o Goldhexe. [maybe she's laying it on thick. but maybe she's right.] 'Cause everything else from Rokkenjima comes back to you.

[manyone]

It does. Beatrice was the originator of the ten tons of gold that made the Ushiromiya fortune and it was that gold that drove the family to destruction.

[ She seems unphased by that admission. ]

So gold is my color, golden are my gifts. Hence, the Golden Witch.

[hauntedsavior]

[she considers for a moment grilling beatrice on whether that was actually her or whether that was the first beatrice, but decides against it. it would probably just boil down to more catbox bullshit. she has a better question.]

So what's your magic, then? I mean, witches have magic, right? So what is it that you can do?

[manyone]

Many things. I can be here or there, appear or disappear. I can grant you a boon or a curse...

[ A flick of her hand and golden butterflies coalesce into a neatly wrapped candy which she offers out towards Anna. ]

Or I can offer you a treat now and then.

[hauntedsavior]

[anna reaches out and takes the little candy, but doesn't do anything else with it. instead, she fixes beatrice with a wry little smile.]

And here I thought we mortals weren't supposed to eat any food offered to us by any magical creatures. This won't explode inside me or anything, will it?

[manyone]

[ For some reason that draws a snorting giggle-cackle out of Beatrice and she shakes her head. ]

No, no. No need to worry about small bombs.

[hauntedsavior]

Can never be too careful. [she pops it in her mouth, then, and talks around it.] I mean, I don't know how witch rules work, but I definitely know how fae work, and you guys are, like, same family, right? Probably got all kinds of unwritten rules or whatever.

[she's talking so casually; it's not even a matter of value judgment or anything. it's coming out with the same cadence as, like, talking about the weather.]

You know, part of me wishes I could be more like you guys sometimes. Would make doing some stuff way easier.

[manyone]

Eh? More like Witches? What would be easier? Tell meeee~!

[ Beatrice seems amused by that, at least? ]

[hauntedsavior]

Sorry, you don't think it would make my whole human life way easier if I could tap into magic like this?

[she is not sure if amusing beatrice is the best thing in the world to do, generally, but she'll take it here.]

I mean, your magic probably could've made this whole transformation of mine a little less painful, just for starters. [she waves her matte-black hand.]

[manyone]

Eh? Your transformation? I didn't know you'd undergone one. What sort of transformation?

[ Well now you've gone and opened the floodgates, Anna. ]

[hauntedsavior]

[oh, good.]

Oh yeah, dude. I'm a cyborg. [she unbuttons the top two buttons of her shirt and loosens her tie, and underneath the collar is a black seam that runs along her neck in a line.] Wasn't born this way, but... well, you're not the only one who's got a bunch of weird magic in her life, I guess.

[she looks at beatrice expectantly with her tie hanging looser around her neck and her shirt a little more open than it had been.]

I know you have questions.

[manyone]

A...cyborg?

[ That's a new word for Beatrice. She leans forward a little more to get a better look at the seam. Huh.]

That's a sort of artificial person, right? I never read much science fiction...Battler would know more I'm sure.

[hauntedsavior]

Yep. So, like, there's robots, which could be sentient but generally don't look like humans. There's androids, which are sentient and do look like humans. And then there's cyborgs [and she waves her matte black hand to indicate herself] which is a combination of machine and man. It sounds like science fiction, but it's absolutely science fact.

Not that any of it stopped this place. I didn't have blood for a while until I showed up here, so I guess life, uh, finds a way.

[manyone]

That's magic for you. It can do just about anything--even give you your blood back!

[ She nods along with the explanation, as if it makes any sense to her whatsoever. ]

So you have little bits of you that are flesh and little bits that are metal?

[hauntedsavior]

More like most of me is the metal bits. Everything from the neck down, and my head's the last original piece of me left.

[she could make that sound a little less worrying, but she chooses not to.]

But you spend enough time living in a little catbox of your own, no doubt some weird shit's gonna happen, right? Like, I don't know, maybe your neighbor wakes up with pink hair and a cape that they didn't have before, or maybe the whole city gets sealed off from the rest of the world by a giant invisible dome. Normal stuff.

[manyone]

What a strange box you must have found yourself in! And then to find yourself here... one wonders if this is simply a home for lost game pieces. Kihi!

[ She seems amused by that thought, at the very least. ]