green like a horse, buyer's remorse

(originally conceived as multichapter)

As Titans went, Uraya was about as different from Indol as you could get. Submarine, inhabitants internally mounted, everything thick and murky as opposed to the stark, sparse cliniquette of the Praetorium's chambers, both inner sanctum and outer profane, and yet all sights and sounds blessed with a glorious wash of ethereal color, drifted through the ether mist and studded on the leaves of the saffronia trees.

So, obviously, Minoth liked it a hell of a lot more than he had his erstwhile home. No Amalthus, no Baltrich, no monks who'd be subservient to anyone even not immediately their superior and then turn around and look down their noses at him, no matter how much taller than them he was. Hell, as far as plant life went, all Indol had was grass.

Some home. In comparison, this was...not homeyer, no, but it was more rigid, more brusque, more vital, more vivid. Olethro Playhouse, his chosen haunt was called, and even though he didn't own the place, his way with words - a real and genuine one, mind you, not some snakelike ass-kiss segmented soliloquy - and overarching bent of capability meant that he more or less got to call the shots on who came in and who went out.

Until Addam Origo arrived, that is.

The man seemed to more stumble than walk into the stadium, and then maybe he was more a boy than a man. Gray hair, sure, but spiky like nobody's business and entirely too bright in combination with his golden eyes. His armor screamed denizen of the Tornan Titan, jigsawed pauldrons and all, but of course those eyes didn't. Neither did his complexion. Who on earth or sea was this?

Despite the bumbling impression, his gait was impressively smooth, even noble, once he'd gotten the lay of the environment and made his way over to where Minoth was sitting in the gallery with notebook clearly open and quill clearly scribbling. Well, it had been a few seconds ago. Now it had visibly paused.

"Hello," the intruder said, hazarded. If he didn't sound so disgustingly jovial he'd even have had time to sound afraid - just a touch, in the undercurrent, but of course Minoth caught it.

"Hey yourself," the Flesh Eater said back, disguising none of his blunt half-intrigued annoyance. Test his mettle, or something like that.

Take mettle, make furrow; the man frowned and cocked his head to the side. "You're not Urayan."

Minoth frowned back. Time to close the book, his notes could wait until later. Attendance and general beneficent patronage was a little down, it was true, but finishing the rough draft either this afternoon or tonight was about all the same. Here and now, despite the spare piece of bent-up gold plate he kept ever-uncomfortably jammed up over his Core Crystal underneath the close-fit plane of his armor, he was being designated as not all the same, right off the bat. That was trouble.

And again, make trouble, meet trouble. "And you're not Tornan. How about that?"

Minoth enjoyed contention. He was excellent at both entertaining it and engendering it. He was cagey by innate composition, definitionally intimidating, the very picture of "do not mess with me because it's as clear as unmurked crystal that you're not half ready to bat back what you've got coming to you." It was almost impossible for anyone to ever catch him off guard.

So was it a sign of something singular that his visitor nigh immediately faded every scintilla of fear from his expression, grinned like a veritable jester's loon, and flopped down into the unoccupied stone seat next to him?

"You gathered that, hmm? Titan's foot, I've got to work on that - I'm much more transparent than my position should allow. Princes should be aloof and inscrutable, right? But that's not me."

No. Obviously not. A prince?

The man, name still as yet unknown, was leaning his shoulder over way, way, way too close for comfort - his obvious plethoraed preponderance or Minoth's less obvious (hopefully) lack alike. Somehow, dreadful somehow, Minoth felt like he was in for something. Something big. Something...world-shakingly big.

"Prince of where?" he asked cautiously, shoving all pretense of pretense. "If you're not Tornan."

The man laughed, and the sound was incorrigibly joyful and hearty. "Oh, right! That's what's got you all out of sorts." Right, that. And nothing else. "No, I'm a prince of Torna, alright. I just don't happen to be 'full-blooded'," he strung up the disillusioned mock, "and so they like to pretend that I don't exist. Until they need me, that is."

At the not-so-casual descriptor connoting the status of being supposedly impure, shunned for reasons unvolitioned, cast out and away despite all possible merit, Minoth's Core gave a stab of alarm. He knew the cover piece did its job well, yet the instinct was a mandate that he put a hand to his chest to hide any telltale flash of guilty fuschia.

"That's a shame," he managed around the ether, bloody ether rushing in his ears. Better that than pounding in his Core, right? Maybe. Only maybe. "You seem like a nice enough fellow."

"Oh, well thank you! I should say the same for you!" And scratch the ether because it was fully bloody hell, he'd clapped a hand across the back of Minoth's collar, only barely missing the again-masked ether deposits and vulnerable banners thereso attached.

Half of Minoth was wired up and about to panic, and half of him was blasted past numb and about to shut down. Oh, he didn't have the energy for this today. How he missed only needing to sleep some couple of carefully-chosen times in a week.

Yes, he missed being a normal Blade, because that didn't necessitate this foolish lie of being a generally battered-up human with vestments so distinct no one would pay much mind to the fact that he had a crest of remarkably Core Crystal-esque placement mounted over his chest, not to say on or in. He missed glowing proud and blue and not having to stitch over the tracks where his practical lifeblood shone through. He missed having all the ineffable energy something non-organic was lucky enough to possess, being able to pick and choose his surliness at will and not being forced into it by preset mood.

But most of all, he missed the constancy that came of having one Driver, and one alone, and not heating up like a teakettle any time a human got too close, too familiar. Of course, normal Blades didn't have that problem, it wasn't as if their Cores pinged bonding to every flesh prison in sight, but once you came unstuck, unbonded, any latching point was an absolute scion.

Pretty dumb of him to be fudging in so close to this anti-mysterious man without even a name to cling to, huh?

"You got a name, Mr.- uh, Prince?"

The hand was still hanging jocularity around his neck, for absolutely positively no reason at all. Architect above. Its owner made an appraising face, musing, "Oh, yes. I suppose you will be needing that, if we're to be working together."

Doing what now?

"My name is Addam. Addam Origo. And you're Minoth, of course."

Of course?

The liminal purgatory of being affirmed as trustworthy was very, very near to nauseating. This Prince Addam had blasted right past the mortifying ideal of being known and straight on through to the ridiculously intimate ideal of being caroused about with like an old friend. You're Minoth, of course. Right enough, only who was Minoth? And why did it make so much easy, comportable sense to this insufferable man?

"I am," Minoth allowed, indiscreetly shrugging out of the touch and standing up to get a better look at his supposed new colleague. "Who told you that?"

Addam, receptive to the cue, stood as well and stepped them both out of the stands onto the empty roundabout stage. "There was a man back down in the town proper who told me who I should speak to about setting up accommodations. Augustus, I think his name was." He put a peculiar stress on the "his", Minoth noticed. His name, of course, not half so important as yours. If we're to be working together.

"Accommodations for what? Architect, quit with the piecemealing - this isn't the way to get your audience hooked, you know!"

Minoth hated semantic cliffhangers. Loved plot twists, hated intentionally dragging the spectators' noses around the point like servile dogs. Now, again, loved adumbration, hints at what was to come so deliciously prescient, but of course that's not so fun when you don't know what's coming. Suddenly Minoth had a tremendous yen for rigid old dried-up history.

Addam waved his gloved hands (the creases were damnably fresh and thus apparent; princeling is as princeling does and apparently this one was as much of an airheaded pretty boy as his face portended) conciliation. "Right, right, you must be dreadfully confused." He cleared this throat, barked hands on hips. "There's a war on."

There's a war on. There's a war on. His head was not in the clouds, his head was full of clouds.

"You think I don't know that?" Minoth bit back, still conversational but letting the ragged edge of condescension cut through. In fact, if one drew up their figures enough thisly and thusly, they might find that it was his very fault that said war was on and bubbling, close to boiling, like his favorite soup.

He hadn't stopped Amalthus, there on that cliff. The nihilism had been palpable, almost louder than the silenced cries of the newly orphaned child, but Minoth hadn't said anything. Hadn't done anything. Hadn't either stepped up or stooped down to the new level of challenge and gruel that Amalthus's crucial loss of crucialer faith presented.

And then, Amalthus went up the Tree. So his hope rose, perhaps, but obviously it hadn't been enough. Now Malos was out and rampaging. One couldn't help but deduce why, if one had been there on that day. And Minoth had.

He turned his gaze, just then very darkly inward-looking, back on Addam, and the golden eyes shone guilt. "I'm sorry. I know it's hard for everyone. It must be having a horrible impact on your business here."

Horrible, indeed. He felt horrible, as a matter of fact, for how opportunistic he was being, whether his scripting hands were forced or not, because the work he was drafting up just today was about what you were compelled to protect in times of tragedy; vignettes of all that truly matters most.

"S'alright. Everybody's been hit hard," Minoth hedged. "And that's exactly why I still haven't the faintest why you're here. Supposing you were sent, for this grand purpose you're hiding, then by your logic old Khanoro's getting tired of listening to Zettar quabble and needs somebody on the ground making crap happen. Now what, my dear prince," (oh hell, he'd caught himself getting fond), "does that have to do with me?"

The skyward lift of cheer on Addam's face was instant, if not instinctual. "Now we're getting somewhere, aren't we? I'm starting a citizen's militia here. I do hope you don't mind!"

Here. In my theater? In my the-a-tre?

"Humor me on this, Addam." Back came Minoth's own arm, clapping retribution and perhaps just a little bit of threat. "Just who gave you permission to impose an entire incipient militia upon this one fine patron and progenitor of the arts? Let's say I just don't agree with your cockamamie little plan. What would you do then?"

"Oh, well." Again, again, again, he looked guilty, downright shamefaced, and Minoth prayed it was only that all-encompassing, even immersing, emotion that made him so dismissive of Minoth's reciprocal advance. "The queen talked to my father about it, I'm sure it's alright. But just like I said, I do apologize for any imposition. War means needs must, and all that. I certainly don't like it."

"Your father?" Minoth returned, as he gave downbeat on their stroll back down the dozens of steps to Fonsa Myma proper. At this point, he was back into his rhythm, ever-unshakeable, and though he was slightly fazed by the offhand mention, he wasn't going to let it knock him off his horse. Not again. "So you're the Addam Origo? The king's son and probably lord of fifty other sundry territories besides yon faire Auresco?"

Addam blushed, and oh, damn it, it was cute. Very cute. If Minoth had to gauge his age, he wouldn't put him much past twenty-five, if not a little shy of that inauspicious marker. "Not fifty, no. Just Aletta."

"Aletta?!" The steps just kept on slipping down and by, which left Minoth no spatiotemporal room for a beat of dramatic surprise as he retracted his arm and smacked Addam's bare upper own with the glinting back of his gauntleted glove. "Why don't you just take your damned militia there, then?"

"Oh, well." A very bland and unassuming phrase, that, but if Addam didn't stop starting his lines with it Minoth was going to forcibly remove it from his vocabulary wholesale. "There are many reasons, really, owing to politics and all that - I'm sure you understand."

Before Minoth had time to interject his understanding or any pitiful lack thereof, Addam finished his thought, calling the final response with the avuncular half-hug resumed. "But I don't know if I much care to argue about those. After all, if I hadn't come here, I'd never have met you! And we wouldn't want that, would we?"

His smile was altogether too wide, the beam of his shine-bright face so overly outwardly warm. Minoth almost felt the need to shield his eyes from it. But he'd never do that.

Addam Origo's militia, here in Uraya. Here in Fonsa Myma, here in Olethro itself. Oh yes, Minoth liked this Titan ever so much more than he'd liked Indol.

"So," Addam began, eyes roving about the interior of the actual house part of the playhouse, perhaps not only pretending to be aimless. "Do you know anything about, ah, being a Driver?"