snowblindrpg | [log] The Pit [open]

You squabble in public, you open yourself up to commentary from the peanut gallery. [ Will responded in a flat tone to Tess.

He glanced towards Castiel, recognizing the shot across the bow with the 'free will' comment but looking singularly un-'gifted'. ]

You two want to posture and kill each other, be my guest. Just try not to take any collateral damage into the pit with you. We're all in regrettably close quarters.

[ Oh so regrettably close quarters. ]

Edited 2018-03-02 20:13 (UTC)

[ Castiel just looks back and forth between the two of them, clearly thinking hard about the situation. It's a moment before he hooks his pan back to his bag and backs down, however reluctantly. ]

If you and your serpent aren't a threat to these people then there's no reason to fight.

Oh, for --

[Tess squeezes her eyes shut, searching for some well of patience that must be buried somewhere deep inside her.]

No, there's not. There's also no reason to jump to threats to kill my snake, you know?

[ His work here was done.

Hopefully they didn't ramp up the tension again, but if so that would be for the next hapless mortal to deal with. Rolling to his feet, Will was headed off ... uh ... thataway. ]

I said if it became a threat. Would you not do the same to me if I proved myself dangerous to their continued survival? [ Or inconvenient to you, he thinks, but manages not to say out loud this time. ]

Yeah, but it was, like, the first thing you went to. You don't know anything about me. You think you know, but you don't.

You'd just said that its nestmates had posed a threat to an entire large city. No responsible deity allows its agents to run feral like that.

Uh, yeah, agreed. I also said I killed them before anything happened, remember that part? You don’t even know the first thing about what happened there or what role I played in it, but you’re just — you’ve just decided you know anyway! Fucking typical.

[Hello, squabbling divinities, you are about to have another guest.

It should be of little surprise that Beckett had been watching and listening: with half-attention since Tess's introduction of herself as of the Wayward, with full focus since Castiel called her goddess. And he'd been almost disappointed when Will stepped in to deescalate. Things have just been getting well and truly interesting.

He's not interested in violence - he rarely really is, despite his regular brushes with it - but they were talking about something a lot more interesting than the possible dangers of feathered serpents just a moment ago.

He clears his throat.]

It's interesting, [he says into the crackling air between the two,] how being turned effectively mortal doesn't seem to have changed either of your perspectives.

[ Castiel starts to answer Tess, but Beckett cuts in before he can formulate a real response. He looks over at him, clearly confused. ]

The ability to die doesn't make me any more human than I was. I am still an angel.

Oh, for--!

[Tess curls her hands in a supremely frustrated gesture. Stops herself. Takes a deep breath. Isn't any less angry than when she started.]

How much did it change your perspective? You one of them again now? And who asked you, anyway? Are we just going to get commentary from the entire peanut gallery now?!

You say that like your reflections on your role in the lives of poor mortals are totally abstract from the presence of actual mortals all around you. [Beckett is wryer than ever. He doesn't terribly care for very powerful beings with a hobby of meddling.]

But it did change it. Mortality, not humanity - I don't lay claim to that. But it's a big change. Makes you reevaluate death, and the choices that proceed from it.

[ Castiel shifts uneasily, squinting at Beckett as he tries to make sense of what he's saying, even as he keeps a wary eye still on Roy. He misses the ability to effectively focus on more than one point in space at a time. If anything's changed his perspective, it's the drastically reduced number of eyes. ]

My role remains the same even in my diminished capacity to serve it. [ All of his personal confusion about what that role actually is now aside - that's not something he's willing to get into in front of a member of another pantheon. ] There's always been danger involved. It's just greater now, for me.

[Tess scoffs aloud.]

If you think death isn't on the table for me back home, I really am the first god you've met.

[She shakes her head; puts a hand on RGBV to make sure he comes with her when she stoops to grab her bag.]

I didn't want to deal with this shit here. I don't need threats from an angel, and I don't need philosophy from a vampire.

Guilty as charged. [Is Beckett's first, quick and honestly thoughtless response to Tess. Of course she's the first god he's met, even in Norfinbury. That this is somehow strange to her is, well, telling.]

And I don't need to hear a pair of divine entities make it clear that their supposed custodianship of the world is, as kids these days say, a hot mess. Or an apocalypse, but here we are. [Not being let off the hook easily for anything, least of all divinity.] What is your role precisely, while I'm at it, Castiel, since I remember you mostly as a minor guardian or the Angel of Saturn? And you, Tess of the 'Wayward'?

Cherub of the ninth choir, first class. First lieutenant of the Earth Garrison. [ Technically he was last officially the captain before arriving in Norfinbury, but directly acknowledging that would mean acknowledging the loss of Anna and Uriel. ]

Attendant to the passage of military and political leaders into Heaven. I'm... not sure where the association with Saturn came from. I've been there. It's nice.

[Tess doesn't wait for Castiel to speak; she's muttering in sarcastic monotone to herself the entire time he's rattling off his rank and position.]

Oh no, it turns out the higher-ups don't actually have their shit together, what a shocker. Truly unforeseeable, no one could have guessed.

[She snorts audibly when Castiel is done.]

Wayward. God. I keep people alive. Thought you'd've already heard that when you were eavesdropping. Never been to Saturn, going to put that on my bucket list. You got any vampire titles you're going to share?

[This is possibly the point where he should be intimidated. Especially the Saturn thing, that is... different. But mostly he looks at them and thinks how much luckier he is than them, to have been brought down to human from so much lower a perch.]

No, actually. I'm only Beckett, the Noddist. One who researches the history and origins of vampirekind. [It never got him anywhere good and he wouldn't trade it for anything.] So I imagine you'll understand my curiosity at the motivations of a divinity that inflicted my kind upon humanity.

Technically the vampires of the world I presided over are Echidna's doing, not ours. [ That... doesn't sound very good, when he puts it that way, does it? Hmm. ]

...That sounds like Echidna. That kind of explains a few things, actually. I mean, never met her, but that sounds like her.

Look, gods inflict all kinds of things on the Earth. Titans, too.

[Yeah, no. That doesn't sound very good. Beckett's eyes narrow.]

At least she has the excuse of a varied pantheon with conflicting interests, [he tilts his head towards Tess.] Even if it makes her claim to protection of mankind dubious. But you were supposed to have a Great Plan.

[He didn't mean to take sides. But it's happening a little.]

[ Castiel just frowns, brow furrowing as he attempts to hold two contradictory facts in his head at the same time. All things are a part of the Plan. Some things are not their doing and are occasionally even a direct result of failure to carry out orders that would have been in accordance with the Plan. Has he thought about this problem before? Yes, he talked to... someone, about it. Someone here? More than one someone?

It's difficult for him to think about, and he's very clearly struggling internally. It may be a while before he says anything else. ]

[Tess narrows her eyes at Castiel, ready for the next round of bullshit. When it doesn't come spewing forth, she scoffs and addresses Beckett instead.]

There is no Great Plan. His dad's just a jumped-up Titan who wants to pretend he's the be-all end-all.

[Whatever satisfaction Beckett derives from seeing Castiel struggle - and that's a whole whopping lot of satisfaction don't get him wrong - is handily distracted from by Tess's revelation. He narrows his eyes at her, a slightly dangerous look though he's not even sure why. He has a complicated relationship with Castiel's dad.]

In your world, perhaps. Do you know it for a fact?

[ That snaps things back into focus for Castiel, at least. ]

All pretenders to the throne seek to disprove the true king's right to it. These claims are only the posturing of failed usurpers.

(no subject)

motherserpent - 2018-05-02 13:12 (UTC) - Expand