demisemidemon | (no subject)

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Ambriel and Teresa met. Clare knows this because she felt it at the time. It's hard to miss two such strong auras, even if she weren't already attuned to pay attention to them, and she is. She knew the moment they focused on each other in proximity.

(Also because Teresa mentioned it. But that was later, and brief. Clare and Teresa don't talk a lot; they've never needed to.)

But she was talking to a human, and the conversation kept going, and Clare didn't know how to break it off. She'd have just left if either Ambriel or Teresa's aura had flared with stress or anger or threat or any other sign of things going poorly -- but they didn't, and then they parted ways.

Teresa seemed pleased, though. So it's okay.

But when she senses Ambriel's aura coming out of the bar, Clare rises from the forest floor, and heads that way.

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Ambriel is wandering rather aimlessly toward the lake when the angel spots Clare on a path to intercept.

So Ambriel stops and waits for her.

Clare stops a few yards away. Because this is what warriors of her kind tend to consider a polite conversational distance.

(Warriors of her kind don't get much practice with polite conversation, as a rule.)

"Ambriel."

Hello.

But they're friends, Clare. Ambriel comes a little closer.

"Clare, hello. I met Teresa."

Edited 2012-11-24 05:41 (UTC)

Clare doesn't object to closer!

"I know."

She hesitates for a moment. She doesn't know what to ask; what she wants to ask.

(--Did you like her? You see why, now, do you see why--)

"I felt it then."

"Did you?" Ambriel says, interested. "How far do your senses extend? Or are you particularly sensitive to those like yourself?"

Or perhaps to Ambriel, since they have spent time together.

"Strong auras are easier to sense," Clare says. "And I know the feel of both of yours. So I can pay attention to them."

She's on solid ground with this topic! It's a skill that warriors have to learn, and some are always better or more focused than others, so the organization talked about it to the trainees. She has a vocabulary for explaining it.

"A weak or suppressed aura can be felt nearby, or if someone is more sensitive than most. Different warriors are better at detecting such things. But a strong aura can be felt even from far away."

"Some of the strange auras here are harder to track, but most of them are no harder to monitor than the yoma auras I'm used to, even if they feel strange. Milliways has many more auras than anywhere in my world, though. Five or six yoma are an infestation, usually. A town with this many auras would be completely overrun. There wouldn't be anyone left after a few days, and then they would have to move on anyway."

"That makes sense. Is it one of your particular skills? Can you suppress your aura? Forgive my curiosity."

Clare is just very interesting.

To be fair, is there anyone Ambriel doesn't find interesting?

"Of course."

Clare says this with slight surprise. Can't everyone who has an aura suppress it?

"You'd still be able to sense it, if you were close enough or looking hard. I don't think it's possible to suppress an aura so completely it's undetectable." It is, actually, but it takes a lot of control and a lot of concentration, and a lot of patience. "We have a drug that can suppress it further in my kind. But if a warrior's taken that, she can't draw on her power enough to sense other auras either."

Clare was not a fan. Except that a) it was useful, and b) her opinion doesn't matter on a mission. That's always been made clear.

She hesitates slightly. It's not that she doesn't want to admit to this, exactly, but it's something else that's been a private thing for a long time, a determination kept close and burning in her heart.

But Ambriel is her friend.

"Yes," she says. "I've worked to develop skill with it. Although to some extent we all have to."

She's worked to develop some specific uses of it, really. With a goal.

Clare always, underneath, has a single goal.

"It is a very useful skill," Ambriel says with some admiration. "Both are- to suppress and to find. If you suppress your aura, are you still able to draw on your power then?"

Ummmmm.

"To a certain extent. You might call it the basic level we can't go below. A warrior of my kind couldn't suppress her power to the point of having human limitations, even with the drug."

"But the two states are opposites. You would be pulling your power up, instead of pushing it down."

"I see." Question apparently answered!

Now, back to our previously interrupted conversation.

"Teresa told me that members of your organization only protect those who pay for it."

Clare's face doesn't shadow, because Clare's face is not that expressive.

But if she were a normal person, perhaps it might. As it is, she just loses the (infinitesimal) relaxation that had crept in while she discussed something she knew how to talk about.

"That's the organization's policy," she confirms.

"But that isn't why you do it."

Ambriel knows this well, emotionally. But it would be nice to have a factual basis for this assumption too.

"To make money for the organization?"

Clare looks, and sounds, honestly kind of baffled.

WHY WOULD SHE CARE ABOUT THAT.

"I have no interest in that."

"I didn't believe you did." Ambriel smiles.

Clare doesn't know how to react to that smile.

(Her mouth almost curls too for a moment, in automatic response. Almost.)

She falls back on further explanation, because it seems warranted.

"That's not a reason for any of us."

"It's the organization's policy. We're only sent out to towns that will pay the organization for our services. There are steep penalties for any town that refuses to pay. All this has been true for as long as anyone can remember."

"But only the organization's warriors can fight yoma effectively."

So there's no other way to fight them than to serve the organization.

So there's no other way to free your town from yoma than to pay the ruinously high fees.

"I don't think I approve of this organization," Ambriel says. "They are clearly not responsible, nor do they think of any greater interest but their own."

Clare doesn't have any loyalty to the organization, when you get right down to it, and she never had trust.

She went to them because nobody could give her anything she really wanted, but the organization were the only ones who could give her a distant approximation. That's all.

"It's what we have," she says, after a long moment's silence.

The thing is --

Clare's world really, really sucks. Is the thing.

"No one else knows how to create half-yoma warriors. And humanity has never discovered any other weapons that would make much difference against the yoma."

"I am sure there is a better way to operate. But that is them. I still approve of you."

If Clare is anything like the rest of the warriors, they are being used.

Of course they are. The organization loves using people!

Clare looks uncertainly pleased; it makes her seem younger than usual, despite her silver eyes and giant sword.

"You could say I'm just a tool of the organization," she points out, all the same. "Villages pay for me to kill their yoma."

It would trouble her conscience more if she'd had any other options. If her fellow warriors had chosen their fates.

But explaining matters to the town headman is always the part of the job she likes least.

"Would do you still kill yoma if you were not paid?"

Ambriel pauses.

"That is the wrong question to ask, if the organization is the one to take charge of the money. Would you still fight if you were not working for them?"

These are all words that make sense together, in theory.

But it's disconcerting, sometimes, how much Ambriel doesn't understand about fundamental parts of Clare's world. How much she needs explained.

"If I didn't belong to the organization," Clare says slowly, because she's explained this before, "I wouldn't have the ability to fight."

Except --

"If I deserted, I would keep my abilities, of course. So I suppose I would. But I wouldn't likely last very long."

Teresa was the strongest of her generation. The strongest warrior Clare has ever met, now that she knows how to sense auras. Priscilla had to Awaken to match her.

Clare... isn't.

"Are you saying that if you did leave, the Organization would try to have you killed?"

For the organization, as for Yoda, there is no try.

(At least, not insofar as Clare's currently aware.)

Ambriel's sudden shift of mood is obvious, on her face and in her aura. Clare is less surprised than she might have been some time ago; Ambriel is her friend now, and Raki has reminded Clare of some things, and so in their way did Sid and Galk, and Elena's death. Friends care about each other.

But this, too, is a fact of the world.

"Yes."

"We're half-monster," she tries to explain. "Humans are frightened by us. One of the ways we earn their trust is that there are rules the organization warriors are bound by. And there are no half-yoma warriors who don't belong to the organization."

In part because they're mostly bought as orphaned children to be made into warriors. None of this complicated 'recruitment' business here.

Clare doesn't sound as if this is something she deeply believes, or a justification that gives meaning to her life. But she does sound as if she considers all of this to be basic facts of the world. Because she does.

Ambriel puts both hands on Clare's shoulders. "You belong to no one but yourself."

And then, after a moment to recompose- "I do not understand everything about your world, and I cannot influence it unduly. But if you ever want to leave this organization, please tell me. Milliways allows us to cross worlds. I would help you, if you would let me. Or I would take you somewhere else."

Philosophy like this is not really something Clare has a lot of practice with.

You belong to yourself, reject these choices and substitute your own -- the organization doesn't teach that, for sure. The life of a traumatized battered orphan didn't. Teresa did, in her way, but then she died of it.

She stares back at her friend, uncertain and touched and confused.

"Okay," she says.

It sounds uncertain, too.

"I've never thought about it."

She doesn't trust the organization. She never has. But that's never been the point.

"I have a purpose in fighting for them. That's why I went to them to start with."

"I know. And I would never want to devalue your decisions. You have the free will to make your own choices. But know that you have more than one option."

Especially if that option is 'fight my own friends and/or die'.

They wouldn't likely send her friends after her, if they didn't need to. That might lead to qualms of loyalty.

Anyway, Clare doesn't have any living friends in the organization right now. Moot point!

"I know I do," she says -- trying to be reassuring, though she's still hitting uncertain more than anything else.

Clare's always had more than one option, but most of her options have always been choices of various ways to die.

"I'll remember."

She tries a very small smile, though Clare's face doesn't have a lot of practice at that. "You don't need to worry about me, Ambriel."

"I don't need to. Nor do I want to worry about you. But I can, so I do. Both your task and your world are dangerous, and you are my friend."

One of the few that Ambriel has here. Nor can the angel help her in any significant way. Thus, the worrying.

I can, so I do. That does make sense to Clare. You can, and you want to, so you do something and deal with what follows -- that's the only freedom everybody has.

"All right."

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