futurology | text | username: archer

[ all right, he did it. Loki can't really find another reason not to tell him. ]

Before Chantes, we were sent on a mission to a lovely little vacation town of Anwick. Anwick was raged by dragons. The last of them, actually. There were a few whelps that made it, and it was our mission to preserve them.
Some of us took the mission at face value, and followed it without second thought. Others thought to do our own thing.
But there was enough to make it work.

We saved the dragons, but the dragons destroyed the world.
Brought about a natural end- that was how they put it.

[ Pride isn't a problem he has. After reading over the message, though, somehow, he isn't all that surprised. ]

Life, death, and rebirth are part of nature's cycle. If ALASTAIR truly claims to defend the order of the timelines of other worlds, it doesn't surprise me that they would seek an outcome in favor of a 'natural end'.

[ Fixing timelines is generally a messy job. ]

I was told that it was the king who enlisted ALASTAIR's aid.

It's not the END that's so bad. Everything gets around to ending sometime or other. It comes down to lack of choice.
ALASTAIR may have come here at behest of the king, but who knows of their negotiations?
They could mean to play us again, tell us to bring back the sun, and naturally we'll do their dirty work for them.

[ she never liked fate, nor did she ever like her lack of choice in the matter. Loki, always changing, never stagnant, but forced into a role that she never wanted to live through, all for the sake of someone else.

but she never considered herself anyone else's sacrifice. ]

How do we know they're truly what they claim? They just happened upon us and called in a debt, that's all.

Cleaning timelines has and always will be an ugly affair. There is rarely ever an ideal outcome, and those on the receiving end of such interference are not given a choice.

[ He knows. He speaks from experience, and even if he doesn't like it, the reality of is an ugly truth he's had to accept. ]

I have dealt with powers such as ALASTAIR before. If everything you say is true, they may very well be what they claim.

Edited 2015-12-13 14:39 (UTC)

Or they're not.
There are other powers in this multiverse.

Have you ever heard of Schrödinger's cat?

I'm familiar with the concept.

[ Go on, Loki. He's listening. ]

Everything can keep changing until you look it in the face.
The further you travel into the multiverse the more apparent that concept becomes.

Right now ALASTAIR is still a cat in a box.
Or maybe we are.

You believe there is more to all of this than what we are being told.

The horrible truth never becomes apparent until the cat's out of the box.

[ oh that was clever. ]

[ He's not convinced. Perhaps it's because he's spent too much time doing what he has -- millenia of being summoned into battles and war zones, into the hell that only humanity could create. That role has eclipsed and superseded everything that he doesn't even dare to hope to be free of that anymore.

Still, he likes Loki's spunk. The other believes there's more to all of this, and whether he's right or wrong, it's likely to be interesting, at least. ]

Proof, Loki.

I'll entertain this theory of yours, but I expect results.

[ she'd sound hot if she were speaking. ]

They've brought these suspicions on themselves.
Please, THEY should be the ones providing proof if they're to employ us in the whole "world destruction for the greater good" thing.

You don't want to be used, do you?
Think of it as expressing caution.

[ Archer, in contrast, would sound very dry. Maybe even resigned.

You don't want to be used, do you? actually makes him laugh. ]

I am a Servant, Loki. What free will I had was lost to me when I became something other than human.

If I am less skeptical of ALASTAIR's aims, it is because preserving timelines, cleaning up humanity's messes, has been my function for millenia.

Maybe their motives truly aren't what they claim. Perhaps it is all a great farce that we have yet to uncover. I have no issue with taking precautions.

However, until we find the evidence of it and a means to address it, the problems presented in this world have still been given to us to solve, and there is no way of knowing how much time we've been given to find a solution.

If you have ideas towards that end, I will assist in that effort.

[ now she's curious. ]

Is that what you want? To forever be a Servant?
Not what you are, of course.

What you want.

[ but she's a creature of chaos, and she'll always be a creature of chaos. there are dominos to be pushed in all directions, regardless of the messes made (which, to her, is a very broad term—messes). ]

[ What does he want?

Someone else asked him the same thing, on this very post, in fact, and truthfully, he knows the answer to that question. He already tried, in his own way, to achieve that one, heartfelt desire -- the one that's been raging inside him ever since he first realized the foolishness of what he'd done.

He was granted one chance at freedom, a chance that wasn't truly a chance, but in the end, he couldn't even deliver the final blow.

It's sobering. Everything about his life has been, and if he ever had any hope to speak of, he doesn't anymore. ]

What I want is an impossibility.

[ The peace he would have found in death when he threw away his afterlife for a meaningless ideal. Heroic Spirits, once recorded, can never be erased, and freedom isn't something he dares to think he could ever have. ]

The fate of those who serve Alaya cannot be altered.

[ His dream might have been a beautiful thing, and he might not have been wrong, but it doesn't change the fact that he will always have regrets. ]

[ she can spot omission when she sees it. ]

Come ON- that just sounds like you've given up.
If fate can't be altered, then Chantes would have its subjective "happy ending" without us. Well, according to you, anyway.

Don't you think it's a little funny?
ALASTAIR. Timelines. FATE.
The whole you being here and all.
Right in the middle of it.

[ there was something horrible that she was waiting to become back home, and in all of her defiance, she had refused. it would be better for Asgard if she accepted that fate, allowed her mother to box her, become that evil, wicked King Loki who did nothing but sow his personal brand of selfish destruction to revel in the smug satisfaction of the ruin he reaped.

they had been caught before but what would be called fate; the gods circling through an endless cycle of life just to die, becoming fodder for those who pulled their strings. once they broke those strings?

the Asgardians denied their free future, all they wanted was the comfort of an end—not even a happy one. it was sickening to watch them all wander purposelessly, untied and broken.

what ever happened to making your own future? ]

And that wasn't really an answer.

Edited (i looked right at timesline and posted anyway why) 2015-12-21 21:24 (UTC)

There is a difference between altering fate and preserving a timeline which has become frayed.

[ It's a fine line, but it's there all the same. ]

The place where Heroic Spirits are recorded is displaced from space and time. Though I am here, my eternal 'true self' still rests within the vault where heroes of many different eras also reside.

It was a choice I made -- to remain apart from the cycle of life, death, and rebirth in exchange for power, a miracle I could not otherwise obtain -- and even if I were to go back in time to that very moment, the time when I made that choice or before, this 'self' of mine would not disappear.

There is no sorcery I know of, in this world or any other, that can break such a contract.

That is why my answer remains the same.

[ It cannot be done. ]

Do you hear that? That's the sound of you killing the hope boner.

Rules in certain worlds are rules in those worlds. You've been outside enough, haven't you? Some things are harder to change when resonance is involved. Belief can be a powerful thing when it seeps around the seems.
But it's just ideas.

Luckily for you you're about to learn a great deal about other worlds.

[ don't let fate win, Archer. ]

Consider this an opportunity to let that boner raise high.

[ A "hope boner"...really, Loki?

Archer stares at the message for a long moment before he answers. Yes, he knows belief is powerful. It was the one, slim chance he had of success -- if he could break Shirou's spirit coupled with the paradox involved in the two of them existing together in the same time, one slaying the other, then...

But no. Hope is something that's been crushed far too many times for him to trust it. He'll watch and see what happens, take any opportunities presented, but hope?

He doesn't think he can take another disappointment. ]

You have a way with words.

[ It's hard to tell if that text is meant to be sarcastic. Mostly, he just isn't sure how else to describe it. ]

Only time will tell.

text | username: archer

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