fandomtownies | Demon Marcus, Sunday

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Demon Marcus, Sunday

Another Sunday, another trip to Fandom. Sparkle was actually sort of impressed with Portalocity's service today. After all, he'd only had one stopover along the way, and it had only sort of left him tinted kind of purple.

Which was fine. He liked purple. Whatever. He'd swing by the apartment during his lunch break and try to shower it off before coming back for the rest of his shift. There was no shame in that.

Settling behind the counter, he pulled out the Uno deck that Kathy had given him for his birthday, and hummed thoughtfully has he started rifling through the cards.

Yeah, this could be fun, sometime. It could get really stupid, sure, but it could get fun.

[OOC: Open!]

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"And you don't know how far down it goes?" Kathy asked, fascinated. "That sounds positively dystopian."

"I mean, you want dystopian, that's Nar Shaddaa. Coruscant at least pretends to be, like, a functional democracy that looks out for its citizens." Sparkle tilted his head a little. "I think you'd probably like it there, though. Like topside, at least. I don't go wandering to the lower levels. I don't have enough of a deathwish to stick my nose into, like, gang territory or anything."

Black Sun and the Justicars wouldn't be a concern for another few centuries, but that didn't mean things were nice down there.

Kathy was pretty sure that any place you were too poor to see the sun counted as at least a little dystopian, but hey, Sparkle had been there and she hadn't, so she was willing to take his opinion on faith. "Smart," she said, nodding. Avoid the places that'll get you killed. Ex-superhero PSA. "Now--Atton lives in a temple?"

Well, he'd mostly meant comparatively.

"Heh, yeah. Big ol' Jedi temple. Way more space than residents. It's sort of a temple and school and a training facility all rolled up in one. Fancy stuff, but god, it makes me feel a little small."

"Huh," Kathy said, thinking back to the classes she'd taken with Atton. "I don't think I ever knew he was a Jedi."

Not that she was entirely sure what a Jedi was, exactly. They were just there on the island, with spaceships and swords and weird opinions about sand and ethics.

"...Are you becoming a Jedi, too?"

"Uh, nooooooo," Sparkle replied, blinking. "Noooo, no. Nope. That is not a think I'm doing. Not just because I don't have the crazy space magic powers. God, the Jedi would flip their shit if I were to show up there planning on sticking around as one of them."

"That seems rude," Kathy said, wrinkling her nose. "You can't just believe in their...magic space god or whatever?"

Not saying that Sparkle even wanted to, but still. What kind of assholes said, We don't want you about their space religion?

"Yeah, no, apparently it's genetic or something," Sparkle sighed, rolling his eyes. "But also it kind of involves a lot of, like, going to space war and shit, which is a pretty hard pass for me anyway."

Because he had a self-preservation instinct sort of.

"A genetic religion," Kathy asked, skeptical. Not of his explanation, just of the whole concept. It definitely sounded...sketchy. The kind of thing that, at least on Earth, would lead to a whole slew of racism and ethnocentrism just because.

But out in space...who even knew?

And it was a moot point anyway, because like Sparkle said, Just Say No To Space Wars.

"No religious wars for me, thanks," she muttered. "That's why I'm an atheist."

Beat.

"The fact that I have experienced the afterlife and met a literal angel notwithstanding."

Edited 2018-06-05 23:17 (UTC)

"Yeaaah, and I'm just an atheist because god hasn't ever done me any fucking favours," Sparkle drawled, shrugging his shoulders. "Either way, I'm not keen on running off and becoming a well-armed space monk or any of that shit. That's for the actual fighter types."

And then, because he couldn't resist asking about that one, "Literal angel what?"

Kathy hesitated, uncertain how open Dante was about his heritage. On the other hand, her interactions with Eva had only tangentially involved him anyway.

"After I died, I went to Limbo, I think. I call it a world of neverending beige. Everything was just...sameness. Time didn't matter because nothing changed. We just wandered through, like an eternal waiting room. And then one day, she was there. A beautiful woman with red hair and wings."

And an unhealing wound in her chest where her heart had been torn out.

"She...called to me. Helped me remember who I was. Instead of just a...a shade, she reminded of who I used to be. That I'd been a girl named Kathy with friends and family and hopes and dreams."

Remembering had hurt, but had still been better than that infinite sameness.

Sparkle chewed his lip as he listened.

Right.

... Right. It was hard to not beleive in anything when somebody who had seen something was standing right there, talking about it.

"And now you are again," he offered. "It worked out?"

"And here I am again," Kathy agreed wryly. "Took a slight detour through literal Hell, which is right next door to Limbo, so, I can confirm that's real, too. But, like, my dad was Christian and my mom was really Buddhist and I still can't really get myself to believe that either of them were right, angels and demons and Hell, beside."

"It's one thing to see angels and demons," Sparkle noted, remembering Gaunt and all of that mess. "It's another thing to be given something to believe in. You can have proof something exists and still not have faith in it. There's nothing wrong with that."

"And it's not like most of them seemed to care all that much about humanity," Kathy said flatly. "Like--sure, they might be angels and demons, but that was more like a race than any kind of religious or spiritual entities. They weren't there to sing the praises of God and guide me Unto Him. They were just doing their thing and didn't give a fuck about what humanity did, unless it could benefit them."

So...like people, but with fancy powers. Even Eva had been drawn to her because she'd sensed Kathy's closeness to Dante. Had that not been true, the angel probably would have paid her as much mind as she had any of the other shades drifting by.

"Yeah, that's probably the least surprising thing anyone's ever told me about either," Sparkle admitted. "When do the big guys ever care about what the rest of us are up to unless they can get some use out of the whole thing?"

"The demons seemed a lot less worried about 'punishing you for your sins' and more about manipulating you for their own ends, too," Kathy said dryly. "It was a surprise to us all to discover no one cared, really."

"Eesh," Sparkle sighed. "At least when Callie was running this place, she mostly just cared about selling clothes."

Some demons were decidedly less shitty than others.

"But I guess even demons are people. Selfish, uncaring people."

And Sparkle was a smidgen jaded.

But not wrong.

"Well, closer to malevolent dicks with a lust for power," Kathy said, rolling her eyes. "But I've also just described most of Congress, so like..." She shrugged. "I guess the biggest difference is they're competent? And most of them are upfront about wanting to kill you."

"Gotta appreciate a malevolent dick that you can actually kind of predict," Sparkle sighed. "I'm not sure I prefer one that straight-up says he's going to kill me to one that comes at it sideways and just kind of fucks everything up until I croak anyway, but I guess the end result is pretty much the same. One just involves less trying to juggle fire."

"I'm pretty sure that if I met a race of super-helpful, kind, and generous beings, I'd side eye them the entire time and wait for them to tell me their real agenda," Kathy sighed, poking at her yellow tofu curry. "When did I get so cynical?"

Sparkle shrugged.

"I think cynicism just kind of comes with living," he admitted. "Maybe it started when you finally let yourself do that."

"Yeah, maybe," Kathy said, taking another bite. She nudged the bag towards him a bit to let him know the food was for sharing. "It's hard to believe in the innate goodness of mankind when it seems so intent on showing its ass all the time instead."

Living through the zombie apocalypse tended to highlight the best and worst humanity had to offer.

Sparkle smiled faintly, a little bit wryly, and nodded his thanks as he reached through the bag and surfaced with a random container.

Oooo, noodles.

"Lot of really big asses with really big asses," he sighed. "Even the best of us will disappoint you eventually. We're only human."

"I don't mind when people try and fuck up so much," Kathy said. "I'd have to be a really big hypocrite to get all pissy about that. Even when people are like, 'I gotta look out for number one.' I don't usually agree, but I get it. It's when people deliberately screw other people over that I really get disappointed. It's just so fucked up. More than that, it's unnecessary."

[I'm sorry, I missed this originally!]

Sparkle kind of just glanced up at her from over his noodles, his expression somewhere between 'wry' and 'vaguely guilty.'

"Tell me about it."

'Screw and be screwed' was kind of his life story.

[OOC: No worries!]

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Demon Marcus, Sunday

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