melodiesoflife | We are off to see the Crystal Tree!

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We are off to see the Crystal Tree!

WHO: OPEN! Those setting out towards the Crystal Tree~
WHAT: Terra has arranged an expedition. Keep in mind that this takes place after the January Event!
WHEN: January 17th - January 27th
WHERE: Plains of Sorrow, Crystal Forest & Crystal Tree~
WARNING: None.

[ooc: Information and plotting about this adventure is posted here. If you have any questions please post them here as well. It's assumed that Terra posted up a help wanted for the heroes who don't know her to see if they want to come along. Settings will be described in top posts to keep thing organized!

Please note that the Friendly Monster and Crystal Tree sections will be one long thread.]

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Sephiroth couldn't help but draw his head to be tilted to the side as K'pandolu went on. Sure, he'd been in the same room when those that had gone to visit the Sage had all woken up but in terms of his learning about what had happened in each vision -they couldn't have all shared the same, right?- was probably vastly different depending on whom he'd speak to.

Therefore he had no comprehension of what 'purpose' exactly she might mean but it wasn't for him to kill what was left of anyone's positive outlook; especially since his comment had meant to encourage it.

He frowned a little and was quick to correct her; even though with only a half-beat of hindsight later it was rather hypocritical of him. Hadn't he spent several months at the end of last year procrastinating about how he'd really turn out in the end?

"You didn't do anything -whatever it was. Doesn't make much sense worrying over something you didn't do yet."

If nothing else, the period it had covered was long enough some of the details would have been indistinct, even without some matters being obscured. Though the purpose she referred to was, naturally enough, the one that had suffused her- that desire to cut free and run from a world she'd felt had offered only pain.

She closed her eyes for a moment against the feeling, fingers curled. "No," she agreed. "There's a chance, isn't there? There's always a chance. But- sometimes I wonder if we can succeed. At stopping the Calamity." At saving themselves. Those feelings were what had sparked that desire, after all.

Never mind that Sephiroth hadn't had much of an inkling as to the vision at that point, K'pandolu's question only underlined concerns that he had held firmly and for a long while already.

Several times, he'd asked himself that very same question. Who knew if that had something to do with the reason why he hadn't seen the vision; that he'd already knew the question it might leave behind in others? For him it still held much of an identity crisis, could he personally defeat the Calamity within himself as well?

Others had answered him before, too, and now here was Sephiroth feeling drawn to repeating words he hadn't taken very far into his own conscious mind when they'd been first uttered to him.

"There is always a chance that anything, could go for the better or for the worse. I suppose the vision was, as suggested afterwards, intended to stir such insecurities...even if they didn't need much stirring in the first place."

"I want to believe that. More than anything, I want to believe we can make it change for the better. But-"

She closed her eyes for a moment, one hand reaching to clasp the elbow of her other arm, gathering herself. Even if she wasn't in a state of mind for his words to help much, she appreciated that he was making the effort to reach out. She could, at the least, attempt some explanation in turn.

"I could certainly have gone without that." She hesitated, and straightened up again. "What we've already seen has been enough, hasn't it?" The trip to the Aqures Tosf of the past, if nothing else. "And- the Weapon…" Her ears flicked back against her head, and she took a deep breath, staring down. She was more removed from the situation now, but finding the Ultima Weapon here in the Research Facility on their escape had been a blow- as much as finding van Baelsar alive had been, and she hadn't quite reconciled that with Operation Archon being done. "It's hard not to feel that the odds are against us."

He might later come to think of it as a little backwards of himself, now being the one to prop anothers confidence up where not so long ago his had been turned on it's head and half-buried in ultimately pointless concerns about his identity. But there was something about the way that K'pandolu were really getting herself in something of a twist over all this that made him look back to how he'd been, with a clarity he hadn't had for a while.

"One would think..." It didn't take much to cast his mind back to the various events that Crystallis had thus far thrown in their way. Each a test in their own right, each potentially grounding to any high-spirit any one of them might hope to keep up. A bitterness, still raw as it had felt towards the Sage the first time, quickly rose up into his conscious thoughts again.

"...I said this before, to a few people. These avatars are toying with us. Pressure testing, I'd suggest, almost as if to see how much we can take before breaking." Sephiroth took a steadying breath before locking eye contact with K'pandolu once more, trying to will her into comprehending him.

"I think, and it's only my opinion, that they may be doing this to further the Calamity's will. In preventing us from being able to stop it, or maybe even to provoke us. After all, if it's to be believed, they've the experience of untold cycles of previous Heroes to draw upon as a resource."

Part of it was most likely that she'd spoken only a little of the events in Crystallis and Eorzea, and certainly not why Palitutu's betrayal and subsequent use of the Ultima Weapon had hit her so badly. She kept her ears trained on Sephiroth, desperate to stay in the here and now, trusting his words.

Subconsciously, she straightened up, tail lashing out behind her almost like a whip, eyes narrowing. "Making us dance," she murmured, glaring off into the distance. It had made her no happier to hear that kind of thing in the tales of her arcanist companion, and she was barely more ready to take that from family (however distant) than the strangers the Avatars were to her. But the words at least drove her to straighten her spine, set the fire in her gut once more as the rage against being controlled rose to life once more. "Then I do not wish to give them the pleasure."

She nodded, folding her arms as she lifted her gaze to meet Sephiroth's, and cast her mind back to try to recall what she'd heard of the Avatars. "Each of them is an embodiment of some part of the Calamity, correct? Then it would only stand to reason that they would seek to ensure it endures onwards." There was a bitter taste in her mouth at the thought. Perhaps it had been a misstep to think they'd ever had a chance at learning anything from the Sage. Still, that was done, and now she would simply have to deal with the hand they now held. She frowned, eyebrows drawing in. "It sounds harder, put that way," she said. "But- we can't let that stop us. If we do… then we have truly lost."

"Indeed." He noticed that straightening up of K-pandolu and perhaps identified it as that fierce defiance at being controlled that he had triggered within himself when the revelations of his own future back home had all settled and he'd managed to order them some. There were still questions, there always would be, but time and time again he'd been told that it was what he did now that made the difference.

So, to a certain extent, Sephiroth had put away those facts about his future and were starting to move on from them. He'd wasted a precious amount of time in worrying about it all.

"Right. While we also hold a part of the Calamity inside of us, we do not act as an extension of its will. Or at least by breaking the cycle we can prove such and actually look to destroy it."

Any thoughts about the Sage just made Sephiroth's gut twist uncomfortably in on itself and not only for the despair he'd managed to instill in so many; he'd revealed the presence of avatars and that some might hinder, others might help. It concerned Sephiroth exactly which category the Sage fell into, and moreover, exactly what 'help' others might intend.

"We need to re-assess what we do and don't know. We need to pinpoint those answers that we need and start asking questions in the right places. Breaking the cycle, might be exactly the window of opportunity that the Calamity needs; we need to make sure that it doesn't get that opportunity."

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We are off to see the Crystal Tree!

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