paixaorpg | One Thing at a Time [Completed]

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One Thing at a Time [Completed]

Character(s): Urd, the Master
Content: Urd tries to find the Master, who is in the grip of paranoia.
Setting: Everywhere? In the city.
Time: Week 26, backlogged a bit
Warnings: The Master being the Master.

If she were smarter, she'd have been at home, recovering from ordeal only she and a scant few even knew she'd experienced. The Master was a danger and a risk even at his most sane -- fully paranoid and insane now, there was no telling what he'd do. Urd told herself that she was simply making sure he wouldn't hurt anyone. The truth of the matter was, she was worried for him. He was always alone, always apart from the world, whether this world or the one he came from. But it wasn't even pity that compelled her...she simply cared about him.

Not that she'd let him know that.

So Urd stood on a roof, unnaturally balanced, staring with disgust at the thick fog covering the streets and buildings. There was so much to deal with -- Yorda's paranoia, finding a way to break the fog's affects, dealing with the Organization, finally making her way to Spira. But one thing at a time...

The Time Lord had to be somewhere...

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Surprisingly enough, even The Master began to wonder whether his latest fit of paranoia was a result of his own natural insanity or if it were a direct result of this strange fog that had overtaken the city overnight. Through his most insane times as Harold Saxon and King of the Wasteland, he was always self-aware of just how far he could go and how far he had yet to have taken it. The fog, though, may have triggered something entirely different within his undead brain. It gave him the direct need to survive.

With everyone attending to their own problems, The Master had suddenly gone quiet in the city. The presence of two Doctors was enough to drive an older version of him into a plot of destruction. The goddess he had been surveying for so long had gone missing from his surveillance. However, now, he simply wanted everything to progress and everyone to go on with their busy lives. It was better to come at an unexpected time in his mind. Right now, there was only sustenance on his mind. And he was hungrier than ever.

For once, The Master had not been on the rooftops like he usually preferred. He knew Urd would attempt to find him there. Instead, he broke into a room from a nearby complex and watched the windows from the top floor, waiting for the goddess to show first. The fear in his head of an ambush, even from his most trusted acquaintances, was too great to ignore.

Finally, Urd appeared from the horizon of rooftops against the strange and muggy sky. She looked tired, just like she sounded from his journal entry. The questions for her were whirling through his head. He exited the room and made his way up the stairs to the roof, leaving a small trail of blood behind him.

She could feel him before he made his entrance. Crossing her arms loosely under her chest, she waited with her back to the door to the roof. Urd knew by now it wouldn't do to let her guard down, but likewise, any attempts to placate or deceive him would be met with hostility. She'd have to toe the line.

When he finally appeared, she held up chocolate bar partly wrapped in paper without turning to face him. "A snack, as promised. Don't say I never do anything for you."

He mumbled something under his breath while he stepped slowly forward and snatched the chocolate bar out of her hand. After devouring it and leaving crumbles of chocolate dusting the ground, he sucked his fingertips and wiped at his mouth. His other arm remained still at his side.

He came around to her side, recognizing her tendency to stand-off when he was exceedingly suspicious or paranoid.

"So, now we're here," he spoke under a quiet but growling tone. "Have you ever thought of just how small we are? All those stars, all these places, all these faces. Even the vermin make me feel tiny."

Urd lowered her gaze, frowning at the swirling fog obscuring the streets below. "Easy to feel small when you're the plaything of a shadowy Organization," she replied softly. "Which is exactly what you are right now. You know that, right?"

She turned and stepped toward him, her hair swirling behind her with the movement. Urd watched him closely, the expression on her face wavering between concern and annoyance.

"This organization knows nothing. Organization of what? Shadows, strawmen, without representation..." he continued blabbering into incoherence, even with the small chance that some of his words hit home. He began trembling slightly. His joints ached to move and bend, so his uneasy stature kept fluctuating as he chattered on.

When Urd stepped toward him, he shifted his posture aside so that the arm at his side would be out of her sight. He even had trouble bringing his head up to meet her sight. Her eyes met his and it sent something that cut through his own mental chaos and presented something that hurt him.

Her eyes narrowed as she caught the movement of his arm. "...are you hurt?" She moved closer, a scant foot away, quickly taking in his trembling form, his hunched posture and a face as gaunt and haunted as death itself. Urd reached out for the arm he tried to hide. "If you're injured, I can heal you."

The moment Urd had begun reaching out for him, a shock was sent up his spine and the rest of the bones in his body. It was another episode of his, revealing a rattling skeleton where his flesh should have been for only a split second. The experience always was draining on The Master, so his weakened state only made things more difficult for him to stand. His legs buckled a little under the weight of his own mortality.

"Ah ah ah," he teased, even short moments after experiencing some form of death, "There is still plenty you do not know about my kind. And I'm not even speaking of Time Lords anymore."

He pulled up the long sleeve around his hiding arm. The fibers were already glistening wet, but the darkness and the fog made it difficult to see. What wasn't difficult to see was what was lying beneath. His thin forearm appeared shredded and flayed, viscerally torn and mangled.

Urd stared down in mute shock at the Master, kneeling on the roof before her. She didn't remain silent for long, though. "What is this? Did you do this to yourself?" Her concern for him translating to anger, she quickly knelt and grabbed for his wrist. Her other hand summoned a ball of white light to hover above them, allowing her to get a closer look.

"You idiot," she hissed. "Why would you give in to this? After all your boasting? Are you really so weak?"

He slowly pulled Urd's hands from his arm and shook his head, sporting a wry grin. "That's what I've come to discover. Strength is weakness, and weakness is strength." He backed away by a pace, starting up a laugh that grew like an engine roaring back from a century of rust. "I am a Time Lord, THE Time Lord, and my death is my new life!"

He withdrew his recording device that was common around Paixao and placed it on the top of a chimney nearby, adjusting it so it will capture the entire scene. He clicked it on, and looked back to Urd with a spirit that could only be described as "giddy."

He held up his injured arm and waved it around a bit. "I want to make sure all of you see this. The show is about to start." The arm began to gain a strange dingy green light. His eyes grew with excitement. His laughter cracked like a boy. A quick flash of his skeleton occurred but it failed to falter his spirit.

Before Urd's eyes and whoever was watching the community posts, his arm began repairing. The muscles snapped together like broken rubber bands going back in time. Even the skin on his arm collected over the hole and sewed itself into place"The period before and after a Time Lord's passing gives flexibility to the cellular regeneration, making any injuries obselete. Why was I attempting to be alive forever, when I can be forever immortal by dying?!" he said, laughing at the irony that was lost on everyone outside of the other Time Lords in Paixao. "By constantly dying, I can feed myself my own flesh and keep myself alive as long as I can. By dying, I keep myself alive. By dying, the only way to stop me is to end my existence!"

He turned to Urd. "Sorry, love. A show with no dinner. Thanks for the sweet though," he quipped, licking the fingers from his newly regenerated arm.

Urd slowly stood up from her kneeling position on the roof, watching with wide eyes as the Master regenerated in the most visceral way she'd ever seen. As per usual, she only vaguely understood what he was spouting. She knew based on past conversations with him as well as the Doctor that Time Lords regenerated into new bodies, though the specifics and the technicalities were still lost on her. Was that why the Master was the way he was? Trapped in some pre-death regenerative loop?

As he turned to her and smiled the same smug smirk, her face snapped into a scowl that she quickly schooled into icy cold blankness. Wordlessly, she made her way to the chimney stack and shut off the recording journal.

To think she had bothered being concerned over him. When she had so many other people to worry about! She felt her temper rising as she stood with her back to him.

The Master made a small sad face at Urd as she snapped the recording journal shut and left it closed. "Oh, come now, how are so many people going to understand that a new reign is coming?" he asked with a dopey voice.

He looked at her face and noted the anger. For once, he felt as though the anger wasn't something to be worth tracing over his own steps for, especially since he was riding the high of near immortality. "Uh oh, did someone take your fun cake and not leave you a slice?" he joked. Her frustration and temper got a rise in him; it was a spirit of jollity with a visceral edge. He felt like playing with Urd, despite what his common sense would tell him.

"So, what do you think?" he asked, wagging his eyebrows.

His levity and jocularity were too much; Urd's short fuse exploded. She whipped around and held her hand up to the sky, electricity crackling around her as she summoned a lightening bolt down on to the Master. She knew he'd survive it, of course, and it would feel so good to wipe that smirk off his face! "You stupid jerk!" she shouted over the rumbling of thunder that appeared out of nowhere, another crack of lightening arcing down. "You made me worry for nothing! You think I've just been sitting around, doing nothing? You don't even know what I've gone through and you're happy about constantly dying!?"

Panting from her outburst, she lowered her arm.

The Master waited until after she tossed bolt after bolt of electricity on him to speak up. The shocks traveled through his body one after another, filling his nerves with voltage almost to the brim. His grinning had distorted a bit. He gritted his teeth together to give his previously bratty sentiment into one of a bully. He still couldn't help but notice that the electricity had burned him. He looked over his hands to see the nails had gone slightly blackened. At the moment he was looking, the color was quickly fading, as though the dead cells in his body were renewing his health.

"And just look at the little goddess now. Tossing lightning at our friends now, are we? You should know better than that," he said, following with a tut-tut of shame. "Now, care to speak up and voice your complaints like an adult?"

"Don't talk to me about being an adult!" she snapped back, clenching her fist. His jibe had hit home -- she already immediately regretted unleashing her power on him, however restrained, but he was just so infuriating! She exhaled roughly, pushing her hair out of her face in an attempt to collect herself.

"It's a waste of time voicing any complaints to you," Urd sighed, folding her arms tightly under her chest. She glanced to the side, her expression grim. "All you care about is having an audience. You're nothing but skin and bones and ego."

She snapped her sizzling gaze back to the Time Lord. "Your madness is being exploited and I'm going to stop it whether you like it or not. Because I care about you."

The Master came closer to Urd when he noticed her spirit had begun to falter from its point of strength and confidence. In a sing-songy tease, he hummed a "nah na-nah na-nah nah" taunt and watched her reel from her anger. "Temper, temper, goddess. Wouldn't want to turn out like me, right?" While she glanced to her side, a voice in his head had been telling him to place his hand on her while she kept on her diatribe. At the same time, he was unsure what it would have meant to her. In the end, he only mocked her further.

"You care about me? That's all well and good, but it won't matter for long, dearie. Because soon, the only thing that will matter is how I feel. And right now-"

He failed to come up with anything clever, because another flash of his draining life force had exposed his skeleton yet again. This time, it hurt him and he crumpled to the ground. Almost as soon as he fell, he held up a palm as if to shove her away before she could react. "Don't. Don't you dare."

As it happened, Urd knew better than to go to his aid. What could she have done anyway? The very damage she wanted to mitigate was all that was holding him together. No, there was nothing she could do for him now -- no words or wisdom he'd appreciate. She merely watched, her expression unreadable, as he crumpled to the ground. When it seemed like he was recovered enough to hear her, she turned and began floating off the ground.

"More things matter than you think," she said quietly, glancing back at him over her shoulder. "I'll find you again. If you're lucky."

With that, she yet again made a sudden exit, almost as if she'd never been there.

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One Thing at a Time [Completed]

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