Gorthan (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shakespearealien) wrote2012-06-26 07:22 am
shakespearealien) wrote2012-06-26 07:22 am
XI. [Video + Action for Goldenrod City.]
[All that Gorthan's feed shows today is this.
Fizzling blue noise and the Rotom that was formerly GLaDOS'. The voice coming from the Gear, however, is unmistakably Gorthan's. Dark, deep, pensive... and with the slightest hint of irritation.]
The songbird has flown back into her cage. A completely foreseeable outcome.
I understand that you miss her, and trust me, I feel the same way. I also understand that getting you to like me as much as you liked her will be no easy feat. But how are we supposed to get to know each other if you won't get out of there?
[The Rotom doesn't seem to be paying any attention whatsoever. It's just floating around the screen, smiling mischievously and making the blue noise fizzle some more.]
... You are broadcasting this, aren't you.
[Rotom's mischievous grin remains unchanged as it nods.
Guess whose PokéGear just got possessed by an electric ghost.
As for Gorthan himself, he's in his room at the Rocket HQ in Goldenrod, staring at the Pokémon currently in his device and wondering if the best way to successfully get it to come out is to just ignore it for a while.]
Fizzling blue noise and the Rotom that was formerly GLaDOS'. The voice coming from the Gear, however, is unmistakably Gorthan's. Dark, deep, pensive... and with the slightest hint of irritation.]
The songbird has flown back into her cage. A completely foreseeable outcome.
I understand that you miss her, and trust me, I feel the same way. I also understand that getting you to like me as much as you liked her will be no easy feat. But how are we supposed to get to know each other if you won't get out of there?
[The Rotom doesn't seem to be paying any attention whatsoever. It's just floating around the screen, smiling mischievously and making the blue noise fizzle some more.]
... You are broadcasting this, aren't you.
[Rotom's mischievous grin remains unchanged as it nods.
Guess whose PokéGear just got possessed by an electric ghost.
As for Gorthan himself, he's in his room at the Rocket HQ in Goldenrod, staring at the Pokémon currently in his device and wondering if the best way to successfully get it to come out is to just ignore it for a while.]
[audio]
Her Rotom does.
[audio]
...Rotom?
[He checks the pokedex...aaaand.]
...Oh. Well, this one just sounds all sorts of p-pleasant.
[Can you taste the sarcasm, Gorthan? It's so thick as to be palpable.]
[audio]
[He sounds very serious and even slightly offended.]
It can hear you. Don't rile it up, or it may get ideas.
[audio]
[Oh, one could almost hear the flinch in that.]
[audio]
When he speaks again, his tone is more like his usual - calm and conversational, yet pensive, as if something else entirely occupied a fraction of his attention.]
Agnus? ... We have discussed love once before, haven't we? I believe I neglected to ask you then - have you ever been in love?
[audio]
[His reply is curt, casual, and emotionless. Musing, perhaps, but otherwise impassive.]
I have seen love, yes; and read of it. But, no. I have never felt love for another person, never been in love.
[audio]
And you envy those who can love. You fill your eyes and ears with words that have been crafted to shake the heart, except they reach that depth and find nothing... Nothing but ever-growing darkness. And you struggle, and your envy grows, and your bile overflows as you try to delude yourself that stealing plenitude from others may provide the slightest taste of that plenitude for yourself...
Is that how it is for you, too, Agnus? A vicious spiral only sending the heart into further atrophy...
[audio]
[He laughs, hearty and booming! Mocking the irony!
...and then there is silence, but he continues.]
I sought power, power to wield the darkest arts. Power to create the ultimate being. Power to punish the wicked and foolish. To scathe the fickle, ignoble, and disgusting creatures of the world. To breathe life into our 'savior.' To animate the aggregation of countless demonic souls, to give it form and movement, to create a fitting puppet in the image of an idol. How...magnificent it was to see it move, to see it cleanse the foulness from the city, to see the foolish humans bow and give thanks before it!
HA! I do not envy them, Gorthan. I despise them. They are weak, pathetic, fickle, and ignorant...Humans... They are but stubborn and foolish. It takes a journey to hell for them to accept and praise their god. A fact that tickles irony's...judgment.
[audio]
[Even Agnus fully disclosing his master plan does not seem to surprise Gorthan in any way.]
Knowledge and power define your place in this world. They make countless others and Nature itself bow to you. You feel that you have everything in your grasp... And then comes that day, that day when you feel that you can sustain anybody's gaze and defy the entire universe, and yet you will avert your eyes as soon as a mirror is placed in front of you.
... Or has it already come for you?
[audio]
[BLATANT LIES. That hour came with the cock of a gun, and a bullet lodged in his brainpan.]
[audio]
[He trails off on a distant, almost peaceful note.
... But then there's a loud bang, Gorthan's fist against his desk.]
At least you were born with a heart. You could try, if you wanted. I do not have that luxury.
[audio]
What place have I to try, then?! I have run the course of a path that cannot be returned from!
[Agnus bellows angrily at the gear, voicing thoughts he wishes dearly he would never have to speak on.]
Love has no place in my world, nor guilt, nor a heart to feel pain and regret! I have given everything in my life, even my very soul to achieve my aim! I became a demon to see that desire to fruition, to see the world and its ignorant masses burn!
[audio]
These new bodies give us second chances, Agnus.
Upon coming here, you did return from your path. And I found myself at the end of mine.
We can be what we couldn't be.
[He lets that linger in the air.]
[audio]
[audio]
So you already loathe yourself that much, lamb...
It is quite alright. I detest myself similarly.
[audio]
Perhaps, in some other time and place, we could have found a path to salvation before we took upon ourselves that final step unto the abyss. But...no. We are but villains, star-crossed monsters on the path to ruin. Let us not lament this, Gorthan, for it is hardly a thing to dwell upon.
No, no. I say, let us rejoice! This new world is our own stage! Let us strike back at the world that regulated us to such pitiful and small roles as villains, thrown away as mere dolls. Let us ascribe unto ourselves a role befitting men of our cloth, our grandeur! Let us take center-stage, Gorthan, to the sight of a world in flames. Let us be as that fabled Emperor Nero, we shall fiddle as all burns around us!
[audio]
In such a world in flames, what do you propose we do about the mirrors? Surely, madness is a safe refuge from inner conflict, but, as the Bard of Avon teaches us in his works, it's too safe a refuge. Sooner or later, those conflicts will come back to haunt us, with no option to further postpone their resolution.
What a destroyer burns to the ground can be rebuilt... what is destroyed forever is his soul. And it is possible that neither of us will ever know true happiness, Agnus.