supersystem soppressata
Chapter 01: minochi
Chapter 02: citrine
Chapter 03: albedo
Chapter 04: kallian
Chapter 05: malos
Chapter 06: krelian
Not just one oversized knife, but - in reverse grip - two. And acrobatics, and drama-theatrics, and unassisted evasion.
Noooo, thought Seren, I couldn't do that. No way. I couldn't operate with that much passion and style!
If there was one thing you could say about BLADEs versus Blades, it was that they very rarely had any measurable capacity for flair. Unless you were Doug (gay) or Bozé (overcompensating).
Minoth didn't have that problem. For the first part, he was bisexual. And for the second, well...
Seren had little to say about that.
However, when Seren was awestruck, they didn't just stand there and help the guy gloat. Instead, they jumped in with it, all hands for yippee!
"This one's toast with the crusts cut off!" they cheered, raygun priming and socked feet set.
"Yeah? Now that's what I like to hear!" Minoth replied, already halfway into the air again or else sliding low to the ground.
One more Ether Blast had the Cinicula practically flipped up and over, but it curled its legs in a tense last throe before going prone in the grass, silent.
The gravity-beam edges of Minoth's knives faded away without so much as a thought, while Seren sheathed their knife knowing there were no guts on it to clean.
"Raid the corpse?"
"Sure thing. An old friend taught me to be an opportunist, about moments like that."
Like that? Like this - they were still standing here, watching the orange lights dim to nothingness!
But no, it seemed Minoth was indeed far away. Seren, always a space cadet, made no move to join him.
"Here comes Citrine, BLADE's only un-self-centered beauty queen!"
Why it's her physical appearance that Seren chooses to pick upon, Citrine really doesn't know; perhaps it's a total lack of self-awareness, perhaps it's a surrealist tack simply selected to aid them in their quest toward not ever having to make any actually important decisions. Which, in Citrine's eyes, is no great loss for the city.
Scatterbrained and ineffective. A person could be worse, she supposes. And it is entirely possible that Seren simply doesn't consider what it means for them to be aimless, and dump all the responsibility on those who have brought themselves up to bear it.
How childlike, not childish. How woefully sympathetic.
Maybe if Seren were a little more foward-thinking, they'd be able to position themselves as a sort of guide to humanity, a beacon of hope brought down from a star. They do seem to treasure their recent closeness to Earth, after all. Citrine really would like to be able to believe in the fellow specialness of others whose very beings are composed and constructed purposeful wavelengths, rather than dismissing them as curiosities with no concept of duty.
Indeed, Citrine can be so, so dismissive. In this way, Seren's constant - well, say consistent - needling and focus on Citrine's physical aspects might very well be their way of indicating that they can tell Citrine's quite incongruous, sometimes. It's a hard time, fitting in; why not be incongruous right back?
"You think there's something funny about me?" queries Citrine, taking a few steps closer.
Seren just shrugs, smiles, salutes. "There's something funny about everybody, ma'am!"
Seren often - well, seldom - wonders if people think of them as crazy; if their offbeat personality and companionship with L makes them a kook in their own right, or even just the chaperone of the damned.
How could they be crazy if it just comes so stupid easy? But craziness might most easily be defined by the state of having a noticeably, significantly different grasp on reality than most others around you. Two big indicators: the ways one speaks and the ways one moves. Seren's not always bouncing off the walls (not always making peculiar poses), but they are always pulling newer and more unnecessary sentences off their lid.
Whatever the case, they have come to realize that anything they're branded is sure to be a kind of good crazy, if those same people estimating and judging have also met Albedo.
Everybody understands goths. There're a whole host of folks in NLA with in-tense levels of RBF, gnarly scars, and penchants for dressing in all black, batty-witchy.
Albedo's skin is uncannily perfect. Albedo wears all white with a cape. Albedo is Mothman in person.
Then there are the things he says. Seren walks a fine line between blood-'n'-guts and squeamishness, happy to pop an appendage in a crowd or under a Tyrant but less so if the poor Blatta's just sitting there, alone, windmilling its wings in fear.
"Always more than one way to skin a cat," Albedo declares, and Seren hums companionably, eager to move on.
But then the walking heebie-jeebie continues, "Only one way to make sure you can still hear it scream."
Kallian's got the biggest wings of any fashion plate Seren's ever met, and where they're usually hard-pressed to believe that any of the proto-vestigial appendages actually do anything (discount the halo in the room - it's much easier to glow than it is to fly, they figure), here they sorta kinda really do believe it. They'll buy it, for a song, and sing the rest of the day about the great white bird they saw parading through the administrative district.
So regal. So serious. So...princely. So unmistakeably severe.
He wears a helm that looks to be from the make of Orphean Technologies or Six Stars, an elegant piece just bulky enough to hide him. And why? Doesn't he look okay, for the eyes of the public to see without burning to salt?
Seren's indomitable inquisitiveness has them just brimming with anticipation whenever they remember the odd mystery that is Antiqua comma Kallian, circling the turrets of the earth.
Even with his subdued identity, Kallian is never awkward, never subservient. His suggestions are always prudent, his advice always well-considered. The warmth that exudes from him is far gentler than it needs to be, in Seren's opinion.
They almost feel bad bugging him, because he's like a prey bird himself!
Eventually he's gotta strike, right? He's gotta have it out for somebody, and that's why he's always stalking around, stealthy-style.
But who could it be?
"You're troubled, Seren?" Kallian peers down at them from his great height, expression inscrutable. Like an Auravis, perched and cloaked...
"Just scrying for evildoers," they reply truthfully. "You wouldn't...know anything about that?"
"Okay, Endbringer," Seren scoffs, eyes rolling. "If you wanna blow up Mira, well, I'd just like to see you try!"
Malos blinks, incredulous-quizzical. The raygun has come out on the shorter side, and he'd been just about to unsheathe his Monado and set his center of mass back over the Architect's operative and non-osteoporific hips, strike of absolution brewing to burgeon, but now... Now what?
"That's it? No threats?"
"Do I look very threatening to you?"
"...no. That's why I'm confused." He hadn't even been able to scrape some derision back into his voice, so greatly had he been set toward akimbo's kilter. Slow it down, Malos. Reel it in. No bets on the twerp.
But even still. "You're way too confident, even for a human."
Seren winks - which is to say, they blink in kind, a sort of silly-sarcastic frontward nod. "That's where you're onto something!"
So Malos lets himself fully slip out of battle mode, arms crossed and hips cocked as he studies the bug set before justice's flame.
"Kid..."
Seren doesn't react, which Malos hadn't been expecting. He'd thought starting with that would have bought him at least some time. Instead he's nearly at the point of pinching the bridge of his nose in a deliberate demonstration of defeated frustration.
"Human kid?"
Emphatic shake of blue-bobbed head.
"Star child?"
Emphatic nod, bright white patch of skin moving so fast its photons blur.
"You don't think I can blow up this planet?"
Reaching up to high-five Malos's outstretched palm, Seren replies, "If anyone's gonna nuke it, I really don't think it's gonna be you."
Could Seren be accused of apathy? Indeed, yes, at times. They were frivolous, no flips to give -olous, and decidedly disinterested in the crux of NLA's main story, when they wanted to be.
But there was apathy and then there was misanthropy, both of which Krelian kept a healthy stock of in short supply. He even carried some antipathy in small measures for most everyone he'd ever met.
Krelian was transfixed on the very upward empyrean that Seren, as of late, had forced themselves to abandon. When you realized that, it was obvious that he'd be unhappy and unfulfilled.
He was salty, obviously. Or maybe he was just low on consumption of french fries, which would have the opposite effect. Actually, altogether, he should have had perfectly balanced humors. He should at least have been able to laugh at Seren's jokes - hey, some of them were funny! I never said all!
Maybe Krelian just hated Seren's poor attempts at comedic relief so much that he'd determined to leave their petty humanoid body behind.
The only possible way to repent completely enough was to return to the realm of god, he said. The only way to defeat the virus of envy, the ouroboros of dearth and desire present in every human heart.
How thankful Seren was not to care that much about such things; to be a universal carer about everything little and lighthearted.
They even cared about Krelian, in an abstract and distant sort of way. But they knew they couldn't help him in any meaningful way. Nobody could, just like nobody could help them, really.