Roleplaying blog for Sage Harpuia from the Megaman Zero series. Affiliated with Isola Radiale; indies please see Rules.
| Luminous Subgiant | [place housing here] |
Roleplay blog for Sage Harpuia from the Megaman Zero series. Affiliated with Isola Radiale; indies please see Rules.
| Luminous Subgiant | Condo 424 |
|| app | MF || stats | MF || rules & tagging | MF || relations | MF ||
|| threads | MF || stars | MF || drabble | MF || plotting || images | MF ||
|| t h e p r i n c e ||
Reploid built for flight & atmospheric terraforming, got brainwashed at a young age into becoming a tyrant's lackey/executioner, fights like a hurricane
Officious, reserved, soft-spoken stick in the mud who genuinely wants to help (both from embracing cultural expectations & from a deep sense of guilt he hasn't fully faced yet)
Repentant & traumatized
Resting Judging You Face
"Sage" is a title. Also a spice
Svelte he/they who likes both skirts & sweater vests
It's not OCD or overworking if it gets the job done
Trying to learn how to Person, but won't admit he's lonely
What are birds? We just don't know.
Content Warnings:
Possible discussion/mention/themes of mass murder, death, war trauma, depression, anxiety, PTSD, panic attacks, dissociation/depersonalization. Writer does not condone any past or present reprehensible actions by this character, endeavors to treat these topics with respect and care, and places heavy content under a cut.
Hi there! I'd like to drop Sage Harpuia from the Megaman Zero series; he was housed in Condo 424. I'll probably re-app him someday, but for now, intending to focus on other projects. Cheers <3
"Harpuia! I know it is such short notice, but would you mind sharing a dance with me at the upcoming Valentine's day ball? There's something I'd like to talk with you about, there, too."
This was unexpected. But then again, so had the Wintertide ball been, too. Perhaps with Vivianne, Harpuia should just learn to expect the unexpected.
"Yes. I would love to."
The warmth that bubbled up within him was unexpected, too.
He should have taken care of this by now. But he’d failed. Harpuia had failed. Once again the reminder that he was used goods, washed up, useless--
Stop that. Stop it. And once again, he had to talk himself out of spiraling every couple of minutes.
Although, in a place like this...the former Strong Air General couldn’t blame anyone for spiraling, maybe not even himself. Wandering through the Inn was like being trapped in a nightmare—but even Harpuia’s nightmares, filled with blood and oil and innocent Reploids dead by his own hands as they were, had never been this deranged.
The rooms passed him by in a blur. Yes, they each had their moments of transcendent horror—yet somehow, Harpuia found it difficult to focus on them.
He was here for one purpose. He should have done this months ago, but he was too much of a coward. He had to find his past self, and re-unite with him. No matter how difficult. No matter how painful. There was no chance Harpuia would let that delusional, spoiled child run wild over Spirale.
(Never mind that his past self was only just shy of three years younger than him. Everything had changed in those three years. Everything.)
He remembered the pain of their separation vividly. Harpuia had resolved to chase down his double, reconcile with him somehow, convince him to re-combine with him somehow...and then had promptly gotten distracted by everyone else's duplicates. Everyone else's problems. It had been a blatant (albeit passive-aggressive) avoidance of his own sins. His own demons.
And now he was trapped in this horrible liminal place where space and time had less meaning than if Harpuia was constantly falling through Cyberspace rifts between dimensions. Every time he tried to get his bearings, he wound up in a different hellscape, with a different monster chasing him--or he ended up back in the fucking mirror room, again. (No matter how many times he tried to explain, no matter how many excuses he made, no matter how many ways he lied or bared his soul to the dead, they would not stop. They would not forgive him. They kept trying to grab him and drag him into the mirror-void.) So he ran. And ran. And ran.
Eventually, he slowed. Not because he was low on energy--but because a thought seized him, brought his steps stuttering to a halt in front of a door he hadn't seen before. Weren't the duplicates supposed to be hunting them all? Wasn't his other self supposed to be chasing him down? If they were both hunting each other, why hadn't either of them found one another?
Maybe...maybe it's time. Time to stop running.
He turned, and opened the door. There were no mirrors. No monsters. No maze. No pool, no stairs, no garden. No dangers whatsoever. At last, Harpuia had found a safe haven. He stepped inside, closed the door behind him. He sat down on one of the plush couches, and let the scent of incense wash over him.
And he waited.
The sound of footsteps stomping at a run thundered outside the door. Harpuia turned towards the sound, unafraid. The door burst open. Harpuia did not move.
There stood his duplicate, clad fully in his old armor (and wasn't it strange, to think of his armor as old when that was all he had worn for his entire life, before coming here). The general of the Strong Air Battalion panted as he glared the Café December cashier down. Still, Harpuia did not move.
Wind filled the space, displaced air blasting Harpuia's dyed-black hair as his double rushed him. It wasn't a particularly potent use of his atmospheric terraforming systems to generate wind--just enough to give him a mild speed boost. He rushed him, grabbed him by the collar of his pressed white shirt, and slammed him onto the carpet. His past self pinned him, boots pressing painfully into his knees, hands gripping his wrists like vices. He lowered his helmeted head closer to Harpuia and sneered, all violence and disdain.
Harpuia did not fight him. Even after being knocked around, he didn't resist one bit. He just stared up at his slightly-younger double, expressionless.
And for a moment, time seemed to stop. The two halves of the same Reploid stared silently at each other--one baffled, one resigned.
"...I thought this would be harder." The younger Reploid's voice was a bit louder than Harpuia remembered being, his soft, husky alto less soft and more harsh.
"I know."
"You're supposed to fight me."
"I know."
The younger Harpuia's expression twisted in a crescendo of confusion and disdain. "...Do you want to die?"
Do I want to die?
He thought of the first copy of X. The malevolent duplicate that had ruled over Neo Arcadia from the time Harpuia was first activated. He thought of how he was subtle, at first--how seldom he ordered Harpuia and his siblings to retire Reploids for the sake of the humans, to alleviate the burden of the energy crisis. And then later, how un-subtle he became. How he would openly threaten Harpuia's siblings if Harpuia didn't carry out his massacres as instructed.
He thought of sirens blaring over Neo Arcadia. Dr. Weil's voice blasting over loudspeakers, announcing that Sage Harpuia was now Public Enemy Number One. The city that he'd ruled over--that he'd spent his entire life fighting to keep safe--turned against him.
He thought of the orbital laser from the space station Ragnarok, descending upon his home. Evaporating the city center of Neo Arcadia in the blink of an eye. Twenty million lives, snuffed out in an instant.
He thought of the first time he encountered Zero. The Red Menace skidding to a stop on that bridge, his purple eyes narrowed in a harsh glare as Harpuia descended upon him like an angel of judgement, his winds whipping viciously at Zero's long hair. You will repent, and atone for your sins, Maverick!
He thought of the laughter of the Baby Elves. Of being frozen, helpless under their geas, unable to move. He thought of Elpizo's empty eyes--he thought of his nightmares of Elpizo, over and over, and begging for them to stop.
He thought of finding Zero more than half dead in the desert. Of that moment where he paused, and deliberated. To live, or to die? Of knowing that if he could not fight Zero, the only worthy opponent besides his siblings, then he could not feel alive.
He thought of waking up half-destroyed in the medbay of the Resistance base. Of Ciel and Cerveau deliberating on whether he should live or die. Whether he was worth saving.
He thought of talking to Queen. Of telling her everything. The struggles of Reploidkind from their very beginnings, and how he himself had only added to the problem. He thought of Queen's reply, something he would carry with him forever: "I think your father--your actual father--would be proud of you."
He thought of his father's face. Not the malevolent imposter with red eyes wearing his father's face--but his true father's face. How clearly he could see him when Harpuia visited him in Cyberspace, the Reploid afterlife. How clearly he could hear him, hear him sing, hear him laugh. He remembered his father's dulcet tenor tones, his loving voice as he gave him and his siblings their secret names. Their names as they would have been, had X gotten the chance to actually raise his own children.
His past self hadn't been expecting that. Still, he recovered from his shock quickly. He pulled out his beam saber short sword, the twin of the one Harpuia had in his pocket, and activated it. And yet--he hesitated. About to strike the killing blow, he hesitated, as if he could sense his future self still had something to say.
His past self scowled. Considered. Hesitated again.
Harpuia--Adagio, the son of X--pulled one hand free. He held it out to his other self, palm up.
"We still have work to do. You know we do. Come with me."
His past self's scowl deepened, turned grim. "Work isn't enough," he spat, low and quiet and full of hate, and despair. "It never has been. Once you've gotten it into your head that all our tasks are done, you're going to kill us. Or let us die. I don't know which is worse--but you're a coward. You're a coward."
"Then stay with me. Be brave for me. Remind me why I still have to fight."
"Fight? Who will you be fighting? There are no worthy opponents here."
"The world is an opponent, Sage Harpuia. This one. The one we came from. All worlds. Every day, a hundred things urge us to give up. And every day, we have to tell them no. Even when it's hard. Especially when it's hard."
"Whether you're single or found your people, feel free to stop by the bar and get yourself a drink!" She didn't know much about this 'Valentine's' other than it was some sort of love day. What she did know was that she could make a pretty Denny/dust serving the locals.
"I suppose that's one way to make a profit--capitalizing on the craze of yet another incomprehensible human holiday. Was this one of the ones that used to be a Catholic saint's feast day, and then got commercialized by the secular public...? There were so many of those. Everything that was turned into a festival only for profit eventually lost all meaning over the centuries..."
