Dust and Memories

It's alive! This RP has survived yet another near-death encounter, adding one more in its tally for "Most Invincible Roleplay Ever Existing."

I'm waiting on @@Fractured. Come on, guys! Don't let this die!

@@Hazard Time There was a long moment of silence as Wilhelm looked at Carnelian over the rims of his glasses, like a professor disappointed in your work. "You say your daughter will one day be Wrath Incarnate, but you show no reservations about being that ideal yourself." Abruptly, he stood, taking his greatcoat from the back of the chair where he had left it. "There are two facts which you have forgotten, Carnelian. One, that what you call 'useless' -- morality -- is in fact not only an evolutional imperative to stop us from killing off our own species, but also -- in the form of friendship, something which is impossible to exist without morality -- what powers one of Equestria's most powerful magical artifacts, the Elements of Harmony." He paused, both to think and increase the tension. "Secondly, if you were so traumatized -- though you call it 'being strengthened' -- by the ordeals you went under with your parents, why would you deliberately inflict it on your own foals? You call it putting them through the same trials you did, but a real mother would never put her children through something she hated so vehemently. Furthermore, have you not considered that such sadism and immorality was the same modus operandi of Sombra? He who you also hate so much?" By this point, Wilhelm had already reached the door, and took an officer's cap and a satchel from the nearby coat-rack. "'He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.' The words of a great philosopher... and ones you perhaps should do well to heed. Good day, Carnelian." Doffing his cap, he opened the heavy chamber door and prepared to leave.

@@Hazard Time Wilhelm twirls a pencil in one curled wing before placing it behind his ear. "Well, then. Lust Incarnate?" He examines Carnelian clinically, as if she was a particularly interesting equation. "Your data will be useful, and you can expect the basic decency of condition of anonymity." He takes another sip of tea, and peers at a watch on his left foreleg. "Well, I do have time for one more question before I must return to my less... ah, metaphysical work." "Why would you have children, knowing that regardless of their choices, their souls would be taken upon birth in any case? Does your foal not have the right to choose their own fate... or do you believe that they would become grateful for your daemonic powers in time?" Wilhelm paused for a moment, then continued. "And, madame, I don't have any problems with my plumbing. Nor, I doubt, do you." His smile looked like a crescent moon; sharp, thin, and cold.

Not sure, truth be told. I've been really busy over the last month, and the other RP I'm participating in is entering its endgame, so I haven't had much time for this. Not sure about the others, though.

@@Fractured "My dear Anette." Wilhelm's expression changed to one of faint amusement from simple interest, and he leaned forward onto the table. "It gets stranger from there?" He paused. "Allow me to count: Thus far, you've run into hipster pirates for whom 'Blackbeard' is simply too mainstream, you've gotten contracted by a reasonably capable town militia -- two ponies, may I say, however beautiful and capable -- to fight said hipster pirates, and you're telling me things get even more insane from there?" Wilhelm allowed a moment, and then continued. "Regardless... I'm not entirely sure why I'm surprised any more. Maybe if I lived in Griffonia or Prance, but in Equestria, we regularly break out in synchronized musical numbers of perfect pitch and timing at the strangest times. Random pirate encounters can't get stranger than that." Realizing what he just said, Wilhelm coughed. "Ah... temptation for Mr. Fate on line four."

@@Hazard Time A pony passes into the room; a slightly-built, blue-coated stallion. Wilhelm brushes some of his mane out of his eyes and adjusts his glasses before sketching a bow in the air, one of minimum formality but not quite enough for Carnelian to take offense at. His lips twitch in a small, sardonic smile as he asks a relatively simple question. Relatively. "So, Baroness... what, exactly, does it feel like to have no soul?" Wilhelm forestalls objection with an upraised hoof, and takes a sip of tea. "Do not ask me how I know, Madame. It is my business to know things." Finally, he sits down with as insouciant an air as could be permitted in the presence of a nominal superior. Perhaps Carnelian would know Wilhelm, or know what the understated symbols of rank glittering at his lapels mean. Perhaps, she might even believe him. "Either way, Baroness..." He cocked one eyebrow. "I would find such information most useful in my... research." Wilhelm rolled the word around his mouth like a sip of fine Bitalian wine, savoring the taste, and his lips quirked upwards just slightly more.

Wilhelm, meanwhile, was ignoring the fight to obsess over the focus crystal. "No, no! This is all wrong," he cried. "The energy needs somewhere to go, it needs a release... Celestia damn it!" He flew around the array at top speed, disconnecting thauma transfer wires and shattering delicate focus lattice-matrices with well-placed arrows, but his quiver was running low and the weapon showed no sign of dissipating the existing energy, though it was thoroughly stopped from transferring any further power. The ever-present hum of the restless magic shot to an impossibly high pitch, and Wilhelm finally resigned himself to the observatory being wiped out. But first, he needed that crystal. If he could remove the focus -- and get it to Twilight -- the Catalyst Spell wouldn't activate, and given his thorough disassembly of most other parts of the machine, only this building would go. Quickly, Wilhelm located the focusing crystal through the melee, but -- to his regret -- the crystal was through the battle. Taking a deep breath, Wilhelm closed his wings against his body and dropped into a free-fall dive. An inch before terminal velocity, Wilhelm's wings snapped out to his sides and he shot back up in the air, his hind hooves delivering a resounding buck to one of the traitor Guards' heads as he used them as a springboard. Wilhelm's trajectory took him straight through the central chamber, and he extended his hooves... ...To grab the crystal mid-flight, tearing it out of its housing. He slammed into the ground and slid a few feet, but quickly hauled himself off the floor to stand once more. To the others, Wilhelm shouted "Go! It's about to explode!" But while the others were still here, Wilhelm would not leave.

"Okay. There's a side way into the Observatory," Wilhelm said, continuing to keep an eye out for any opposing forces. "If we cut through the plaza three streets ahead, there's a little backstreet that can take us up to the Observatory's service entrance, where the astronomers and researchers would receive shipments and deliveries from Canterlot proper; glass eyepieces, bulk crystal, et cetera. It's much longer than trying to punch through the castle, but the castle's certainly guarded. The side way... probably not. Probably." Wilhelm peered up at the airships overhead, steadily pulling away from the city under full afterburner; going that fast, they'd escape the blast radius, but need to resupply from either a ground ley line or an airborne tanker soon after. If this situation was ended quickly, the King and his cabal could still be tracked down and held accountable for their cowardice. "And as for the King and his forces... well, some of them might be fanatical enough to fight for him still. Others? Well, they just saw their coward ursurper speed off into the ether, leaving them all to die. Not exactly a stallion to fight for, there." Wilhelm relished those words, ones he would not dare say in public before this. Coward ursurper. There were certainly other feelings he could air about his life since Celestia's death, but he swallowed them like venom -- with a wince and a faint full-body shiver. This was not the time for either poisoned or honeyed words; this was time for action. His bow almost seemed to hum in sync with his heartbeat; action. War. Wilhelm's expression curved into a sharp, crescent-like smile, and something undefinable -- that of a pony who has seen service, and fought things most ponies would run away from -- glittered in his eyes. "In any case. Oorah, mes Capitane -- let us write the final act of our story."

Wilhelm raised an eyebrow, still hovering where he was. Quickly, he looked to the side at the nearby houses, and an idea struck him. Wilhelm flew over to Sharp, and settled down beside him. Quietly, he whispered "We can bridge the gap with materials from the houses. We could use doors as the bridges proper, and columns and rafters as braces. Single file, one pony at a time. Pegasi first, to go across the chasm and hold the bridges down while the others cross. Half pegasi on that side, half on this side. Unicorns can build the bridges, and the earth ponies can gather the materials." He backed off, then shot back into the air, mentally measuring the length of the chasm and comparing it to the materials in various different buildings within easy range of the company. It seemed like the bridges could be easily created, but the alicorn-daemon could -- and might -- simply remove the bridges or make the chasm wider. Somehow, they'd have to distract the daemon, or... hm.

Wilhelm nodded. "Understood." His sword was removed from his hoof and placed back in its flank-sheath, to be replaced with Wilhelm's bow. Gathering his strength, he leaped up in the air, and his wings shot out to their full extent. Wilhelm glided over the assembled troops before switching to a hover around the rear of the formation. Wilhelm picked up an arrow between his teeth and nocked it to the bowstring, but did not draw and fire. Not yet, anyway, though Wilhelm knew the time would soon come. The daemon was an unpredictable factor, and Wilhelm... did not like variables of that sort. But Wilhelm wasn't quite sure the assembled force could kill the daemon -- or rather, banish it to the Pit for the next few centuries while it recovered enough thauma to bring itself back into the world proper. In any case, he kept a close eye on the husk, and the other eye roving across all routes for enemy snipers to set up or forces to arrive. Every so often, his bow would twitch slightly in a certain direction, and Wilhelm would watch for any unconscious movement on a watcher's part. Old habits die hard, Wilhelm thought. Especially when most of them were created to prevent you dying.

Wilhelm stared down the demon, his expression full of cool, repressed fury. "Ponies are nothing like you. You are what you are by your nature. You never have a choice about your morality; you were born to be evil. If one can even term your genesis as a 'birth.' You have no morality or conscience, do you?" Wilhelm waited for a split second, then continued. "I almost pity you. Almost. For all you talk about freedom and will, you never had a choice. You never even knew or will know that you can choose. But ponies?" Here, he raised his voice and turned to the Guards. "Ponies have choices about what they can be! Ponies can decide whether they side with good or evil. Do none of you Guards remember what we were taught at school for literature, and again for discipline at the Academy? 'A coward dies a thousand times before his death, but the valiant taste of death but once?' Do you really want to go back to your homes, to a world where you might drop dead at any moment or lose all your worldly possessions at a single thought, and every waking second you have in your home, die another time? Be valiant! If we must die, we will die as Guards! We will die honorably, in the ideals of the ancient Pegasopolis hoplites of old!" "But we will not die," Wilhelm continued. "We have the power of the Element of Magic behind us. Of the Tarot. Of our own friendship -- the most powerful of all Equestrian magics. And all that waits for you -- if you cut and run now -- is a legacy of dishonor. You can stand with us now and reclaim the glory you have lost, or you could leave, and die every second of every day for the rest of your life. We are only ponies, like you! We have stood against these demons, and we have prevailed this far! Now, stand with us one last time!" Wilhelm withdrew his sword from the cobblestone and raised it to the sky. "I am Sergeant-Major Wilhelm de Winter, second-in-command of the 135th Specialist Archers, son of Colonel Friedrich de Winter, former commander of the Canterlot West Gate Air Division, and a proud member of the Royal Guard!" He lowered the sabre, pointing it at each stallion in turn, and finally resting it directly at the chest of the dissenting Guard. Quietly, he finished: "Who are you?"