It is Time [Completed]

[dix-des-coeurs.livejournal.com]

Characters: Luxord, Machu Picchu, Albedo, and whoever else is crazy enough to interrupt this menage a trois.
Content: Number X enters Paixao. Chaos ensues.
Setting: Muspelheim Gate
Time: Morning
Warnings: Snark? None yet, really.

It was a beautiful morning.

Ironically, whenever the Organization arrived on a world, it tended to be a beautiful morning.

Those never lasted long.

Luxord idly wondered whether Paixao would share the same fate as other worlds had before it – engulfed by darkness, the remaining fragments scattered across space, congregating and merging to form little half-worlds in the twilight.

Probably.

But for now, it was a beautiful morning, and Luxord had to enter the city before he could do any real damage.

He stood patiently in line, his black cloak the only features setting him apart from the multitudes of blonde, blue-eyed people before and behind him. No sense causing a commotion this early in the game – he didn’t want people remembering him when the real trouble started. No, better to wait patiently for now.

Except he didn’t need to be patient.

He allowed a slight smile to play across his lips as he grasped the threads of time before him and pulled slightly, increasing the speed of the time around the gate and the line he was in. When a twenty-minute wait had passed in five, he released the threads and let time settle back into its normal tempo.

It was then that the gatekeeper addressed him. “Name, sir?”

“Ludor,” he replied smoothly. Well, it wasn’t technically a lie.

Not that he cared.

“Thank you, sir.” The gatekeeper carefully recorded the pseudonym in his records and gestured towards a second booth. “If you’ll go to the second booth, you’ll receive your journal.”

Luxord continued on and picked up a sleek black rectangle from the second booth, barely hearing the gatekeeper’s final words to him: “Welcome to Paixao! Enjoy your stay.”

I rather think I will.

Comments

[birddefender.livejournal.com]

Picchu woke up in the morning and looked around the room she had shared with Naruto and Haku. Naruto was gone without any indication of where he'd went, but that didn’t bother her. She had thought he was much like her anyway. Always wanting to rush onto the next task. She’d been poking over the journals late that night trying to get to sleep and noted some mentions of an Organization. And some individuals who seemed...questionable in motives and amusingly snarky on the journal system. She wondered if perhaps this..."Organization" was composed of these strangely similar individuals...and if they might have either her own, her brother’s, or her other siblings’ roles in this city. She also chose to keep an eye and ear for the one who her brother seemed to be interested in.

After writing a note to Haku and playing "cannibal" to an egg for breakfast, she decided to head out there and investigate Paixao thoroughly...and get a bath in the rain water. (Apparently the bird mindset missed the part about a bathroom in the hotel being ideal for that sort of thing, even if she was part a domesticated macaw.) She started walking. After a decent amount of traveling, she arrived back at the gates from which she had entered the city. She had a chance at to admire the handiwork from the inside this time. Sword still in hand, one might think she seemed to be imitating some sort of ridiculously tall monument. She did enjoy this city, even if it needed her and the weather was being ridiculous.

[cloak-of-white.livejournal.com]

Albedo had been all the way around the city, from one end to the other. The most interesting things he had seen, period, were the gates themselves. Let other people wonder about the domes, or the Xerox citizens. He had more important things to wonder about.

Like why the hell a nine foot tall woman was standing in front of one of those gates with a sword. A bit ostentatious, that.

Albedo did something he didn't often do, at this point. He stood back, and waited for something to happen. Maybe it would give him some new information; maybe he'd rip off an arm. Who knew? It just felt like one of those days.

The weather meant nothing to him; before anything could touch him, it hit an invisible shield that took it -elsewhere-. Whoever was running this freak show was doing a damn poor job of it, that was for sure...

[dix-des-coeurs.livejournal.com]

Luxord flipped his hood up over his head as he entered the gates. The torrential downpour, while not inconvenient, was certainly unexpected. He found himself rather grateful for the foresight that had led him to weatherproof his trench coat a few weeks ago.

The first thing to catch his eye was the amazingly tall woman with the sword standing just inside the gate. Trying to shake the distinct impression that she had just thrown somebody out of Eden, he offered a single comment - "Impressive weapon, madam." - before passing her by to investigate the more interesting phenomenon - the white-cloaked man whom the rain did not touch. Here was an interesting specimen indeed.

[birddefender.livejournal.com]

"Thank you. Nice choice for a coat in this weather." Picchu said in a scratchy elder-like voice that closely reflected her macaw background. She turned when he walked behind her. How strange. The person behind her had a shield protecting him from the rain...that didn’t seem to have the right composition for a shield circle. At least by her knowledge it wasn't the right composition. It resembled something else. "Interesting shield you have," she addressed to the white-cloaked knight.

It was curious indeed. She'd observe these two for the time being. Being drenched didn't bother her in the least. There wasn't much else to do anyway at the moment. She could be rushed one minute, patient the next, but she was willing to wait to learn things. That's the way things worked in-time, after all. As her brother often said, 'The invention of time allows things to persist.'

[cloak-of-white.livejournal.com]

Albedo smirked and sketched a mockery of a bow to the black-cloaked stranger before turning his attention to the woman. "Why thank you," he said with what was clearly a sneer. "Such a lovely voice you have there, and such an interesting aura..." Albedo shook his head with a self-mocking, quite clearly insane laugh.

What is time to an immortal? Albedo should not have existed; his body had been destroyed in a gun battle with his elder twin, Rubedo, and his consciousness dispersed to the UMN...

But then Wilhelm had stepped in with an offer and a promise.

But that was in the past. What mattered now was finding a way back to Rubedo, and unless he missed his guess, the two individuals before him held pieces of that puzzle. Or they would soon.

"I would hardly call it a shield though," he said with an afterthought. "The rain just doesn't want to get my cloak wet... so I send it away. Just like this," he said with a cackle that quickly spiraled away into madness as he ripped off his left hand and made it go away, too, then regrew it in a flash of wavy light.

[dix-des-coeurs.livejournal.com]

Luxord gave a small nod, barely acknowledging the woman's compliment before he returned his attention to the white-cloaked man. Not a moment too soon, either - he had turned back just in time to catch the mocking bow made in his direction. He smirked and returned the bow with every bit of disrespect its predecessor had contained. So the man wanted to play, did he.

Well, Luxord was certainly game.

Well, that was interesting. The man could see auras. Definitely a talent to keep in mind. And he could -

Luxord met the man's eyes, utterly nonplussed at his latest trick. While it was true spontaneous regeneration was a remarkable talent, to waste it so recklessly simply made a travesty of its power. And that laughter - clearly the man was insane.

Well, this certainly put a new spin on things.

"Impressive indeed." He applauded lightly and sarcastically. "Tell me, what other tricks do you have hidden up your sleeves, in that cloak? Perhaps you'll produce a rabbit."

[birddefender.livejournal.com]

Picchu outstretched her wings, flapping them, primarily to shake out some of the rain water, and secondarily, to cope with the changing temperature, which was dropping quite fast, cold enough that it would soon snow.

"Something's obviously very wrong with the weather system," she grumbled mostly to herself.

The Defender merely shrugged at the remark about auras and her voice. It didn't matter. Time was of necessity to the Powers That Be. They used time as a means to learn about things they wouldn't know how it properly worked otherwise. A producer at a factory knows a lot less about their product than the consumer, after all. Even if they had once visited it some time ago.

"Claudications (http://www.youngwizards.com/ErrantryWiki/index.php/Claudication) aren't unusual, even temporospatial ones. Quite a remarkable amount of energy to merely show off, though." She ignored the insane laugh; the understanding of most wizards was that knowledge has many forms and the level of functioning of an individual was not to say that they couldn't perform impressive magic.

Picchu glanced at the dark-robed figure as he seemed to mock the white-cloaked knight, just as sarcastic as her suspected individuals for the 'Organization'....Another one, possibly? Curiosity piqued she decided to stick around and see if she could gather information by observing. She'd get involved if it got dangerous, but right now she was working on learning how things in the time frame within this domed city.

[cloak-of-white.livejournal.com]

Albedo smirked at the black cloaked stranger, and folded his arms as he levitated a little ways into the air. "That's for me to know and you to find out, now isn't it?" he asked with a sardonic smile.

Taking a moment to float forward, he sized up the bird-winged woman. She was a colorful one, indeed, but he'd seen more impressive beings - being from a time when humanity stretched to the furthest corners of the known universe had its advantages. "Ahhh, but spatial distortions are something of a specialty of mine, ma péche."

He was, of course, hiding quite a bit. But then, when you're dealing with a certifiable madman, who can say what is truth and what is fiction? To someone with Power, anything imaginable is possible.

Albedo had Power. And he also had the imagination of a madman. A truly dangerous combination.

He also didn't care particularly about the weather. The rain still refused to touch him, and he couldn't have cared less about the cold - he was, after all, already dead in a very real sense. But even before that, he'd been more or less immune to temperature... It came with the territory of being designed to kill God.

[dix-des-coeurs.livejournal.com]

Well, this had certainly been a bust. Aside from the white-cloaked lunatic proving that he was indeed certifiably insane and the giant woman stretching rainbow-colored wings, nothing of interest had happened since his entrance into the gates. There was absolutely no reason, Luxord decided, for him to stay here.

"Well, as...intriguing as this meeting has been, I'm afraid I must be off." Luxord turned his back to the both man and woman and strode further into the city. The first flurries of snow had just settled on the ground when he offered a parting comment from underneath his hood.

"After all, time waits for no man."

[birddefender.livejournal.com]

"Don't call me Peach." The winged goddess muttered angrily at Albedo. (Knowing the verbal aspect of the creation languages innately was a useful ability.) When she registered the rest of Albedo's statement, she shook her head. Really, now she would have to deal with another potential threat other than her brother? Spatial distortions were annoyances, especially if they created eversions. First of all, those took energy to fix. Second of all, she couldn't find any simple indication of the composition and layers of time in the city. The heart of the city-world was hidden too deeply; one might make the assumption that someone had taken it far away.

To Luxord's retreating back, she smiled, "True enough, if you exist in time, it never waits. For some, however, time is flexible. It has enough layers."

[cloak-of-white.livejournal.com]

Albedo smirked at the man's parting shot, but said nothing. Time didn't matter to him. It seldom does, to immortals.

The winged woman's words made his smirk grow. Not many people understood the old romance languages (very old, to Albedo, whose original time was someplace millenia after Earth had disappeared).

In a lilting, insane tone, he replied to her, "A thousand appologies, Mademoiselle Macaw. I had no intention of insulting the wildlife." His voice spiralled away into a cackle, and before anything could be done or said in retribution, he had vanished, leaving nothing whatsoever to show that he had been there. Not even a traceable trail.