DuskDream.8042

Tezzin fell backward, hot breath exhaling as the pillows caught him. He heard his partner's amused giggle as he regained his breath and felt the cool subterranean air soothe his sweaty forehead. Though he rested his eyes, Tezzin's ear caught her movement, twitching weakly in response.

Kezza crawled over him, and took in the view of afterglow flushing his features before nuzzling his cheek. "What a scintillating surprise," she smiled against him. "Can I infer your presentation went well?"

An exhausted chuckle came through a sigh from the spent asura below her, "I-I suppose it did, y-yes."

"I knew you could do it," she whispered encouragement beside his ear, her breath still warm. "You were so nervous.. I'm proud of you." He felt their torsos meet, and he blushed at the sticky texture it applied to his partner.

Tezzin swallowed, but returned the nuzzling. Kezza took the opportunity to kiss him, and offered a slow rotation of her hips to tease his overstimulated body. He shivered involuntarily. "K-K-Kezza.."

That giggle returned, though Kezza then carefully withdrew herself from him, and sat down. Propping himself up on his arms, Tezzin saw she maintained the wonderous enchantment between her legs. It was a modest size, ever-erect and a shimmering glossy purple that dazzled the eyes. The mesmer had designed it after coaxing specifications from him, and Tezzin found it perfection. It was perfect, yet he wondered..

Tezzin stopped the thought in its tracks, but golden eyes flashed in his mind. His chest tightened with the truth.

Kezza tilted her head at the small shift in his demeanor. "Vinn? Is something wrong?"

"A-Actually, K-Kez, I-I.. There was s-something, I w-wanted t-to ask y-you about." Tezzin gathered himself enough to prop himself up on his hands, his knees bent. He ran a hand through his tussled hair to no tidying effect.

Kezza hummed and nodded, ears cupped forward with curiousity in her eyes.

Tezzin swallowed again. "I-I.. I en-encountered the Disaggregator, a-after m-my p-present-ation."

The mesmer tilted her head slightly before shaking it. "Gerik?" She sighed, "Did he give you a hard time about your lecture?"

Gold eyes pierced his memory. An echo of sensation under his chin placed a yearning in his body, one he could suddenly identify with clarity.. And fear.

"Don't mind him," she continued, smiling, "The mention of synergetics always brings out his contrarian side. He once argued with me for three hours about applied synergetic theory in his dynamics lesson plans."

That was right. The Disaggregator was the notoriously challenging professor young Dynamics students would extol about in the commons and crafting halls. Where in that imposing form and cruel looking eyes was there an asura capable of being an instructor?

He found himself inexplicably drawn to discovering the answer.

"N-No, it.. It w-wasn't a-a-anything l-like that. He.." Tezzin searched for new words, which his partner patiently awaited. "H-He act-actually e-enjoyed m-my presentat-ion! H-H-He st-stopped me a-afterward, t-t-to tell me s-so."

Kezza's ears lifted and her eyes brightened, and she placed her hands on his knees. "He did? That's fantastic, Vinn! I regret I was unable to be there personally," she frowned, and rested her chin on the back of her hand so it balanced on his knee. "May I request a private recitation?"

"O-Of course, Kez." He smiled, and it revived her own.

"So what was it you wanted to ask me?"

Tezzin's smile was wracked with nerves he hoped he disguised. "O-Oh, I-I, um," he shrugged, "I-It's n-n-not important."

She tilted her head, "You're positive?"

He nodded. "I-It was n-nothing," the lie passed his lips. In truth, his question had answered itself, making space for the new ones which rushed to replace it:

If given the opportunity, would he?

Should he?

Would he?

With Kezza's presence to soothe his worries, Tezzin decided to let go of wondering. It was all a fiction which lived only in his mind, after all. There was no rational cause to believe the Disaggregator felt such an inclination, let alone enough to consider him a potential partner of any sort. In fact, Gerik seemed to have made a point of letting him know his disdain. Even now, Tezzin could still feel the fear he instilled in him.

He continued forward to where she stood on the overlook, stopping at her shoulder to share the view. The plume of black that had marked Divinity's Reach for the past week rose into the evening's dense clouds, far enough in the distance that she might have convinced herself there would be time yet.

A steadying weight fell on her shoulder, and after a moment, Kezza turned her head to regard him with a dim hope. "Do we have news?"

Her ears drooped under their ornate cuffs before he could formulate an answer, leaving the Disaggregator shaking his head.

"I should have issued the retreat sooner." The Magistrix stepped forward from him, placing her gloved hands to rest on the overlook's stone rail. "I should have been down there, Gerik."

"Kez.."

"You know I should have. This could not have happened if I had been present when we breached the city."

"You were needed here."

"They needed me!" She shot back, unwilling to turn again to face him.

"Pwitt needs you. Kez, I need you. So does the rest of the Krewe."

She was quiet, and eventually, her hands fell back to her sides in the same defeat the last few hours had trapped her in. "Their deaths are my responsibility, Ger."

As her ears curled back, Gerik joined her and took her hands in his. Though she would not face him, Kezza offered no resistance.

"They'll escape, Kez. Just give them time."

The press of his snout against her forehead sent welcome warmth to her chest, and she took a breath in hopes it would steady her.

Kezza exhaled. "Have you given the orders?"

He replied, without parting from her. "Yes, Magistrix. Preparations to ward the city cube are underway."

Magistrix. The title she kept, despite long surpassing its scope in the course of her career.

She drew his hands to her lips, kissing the knuckles of his gauntlet in thanks, and nodded. "Then, there is nothing more for us to do."

"Rest, I think, should be your current priority."

Kezza hummed, and gently nodded. "You're correct. As always, Gerik."

Finally, he gave her that same old smirk that would bolster her spirits. "Was there any doubt?"

Gerik gladly caught the kiss Kezza bestowed, soft and brief though it was.

"Take me to Pwitt," she requested. "I need to see my progeny before I can rest."

Playing Magistrix Kezza did not go as I planned. But I guess, what good RP ever does?

To start, I didn't think she'd be that much of an oddball. Her backstory was just being a young college grad, naïve enough to be taken in by the Inquest propaganda that was no doubt targeting students throughout their late education. If you've attended USAmerican high schools, you know the kind of recruitment efforts I had imagined.

Kezza, bright and well-meaning, was convinced of two things by the Inquest PR campaigns at the time of her recruitment: 1) Between the dragon below and the whole of Tyria above, asurakind existed in a small and precarious corner of a world that never wanted them and did not wholly welcome them. 2) The Inquest offered the best path forward for asurakind, securing a future that was worth any sacrifice, including signing her life away on the recruitment form.

So she did.

I didn't expect her to stay Inquest. I expected to either see her talked out of drinking the kool-aid, shown or realized the error of her ways through RP events, or.. That I'd just let her get killed off during one of the (many) times she was threatened or attacked by anti-Inquest (anti-Inq?) characters.

Her resolve was only ever bolstered. More on that later.

Kezza started off shy, and barely competent as a mesmer, but she had the spirit. So much so, that eventually, I realized the Inquest had a clever move to make with this pawn: Let this sweet face and bubbly personality front public relations. Her apparent innocence could sell the Inquest messaging like no one else. She could become a dream recruiter, and sweep in fellow idealists the same way she was swept up.

Kezza was joined by a more militant, cold and calculating scientist, named Gerik. He was to ensure plans with Kezza went in the Inquest's favor, whether that was acting as her bodyguard or dispatching her for being a suspected spy. (Gerik begun as a deeply self-serving bastard who planned to take Kezza out and usurp her department for his own gain, but was eventually so won over by her personality and earnestness that he loved her instead. Emblematic of things to come?)

The two would venture about, trying to recruit asura, and play foils to other characters/organizations in this snarky, Team Rocket esque, sometimes goofy or slapstick style we had for baseline RP. (we would adapt our tone according to RP, of course, and had no real limits-- As long as it could be accounted for in-universe and didn't contradict canonical events/tone it was gladly taken on. This would later become a staple guideline for [INQ])

These were my earliest days in open RP (boy do I miss the days of Tarnished Coast open RP). I was encouraged by how many whispers we got about people loving Gerik and Kezza and their hijinks. We made a lot of people smile and laugh, and it was really rewarding being the 'bad guys' in an ecosystem that lacked a proper Team Rocket style baddie. It was especially fun to be able to fill the baddie role for players whose characters needed an Inquest character to play off of.

That's where the guild came from. [INQ] was founded by myself and Balderdashing (Gerik), as a way to unite RPers whose stories were tied up in the Inquest one way or another. And as we grew the guild, I figured, so too would the stakes grow, including Kezza's notoriety within the metakrewe.

The Magistracy was intended as a fancy title for the paper jockey department. A bureaucratic mire where endless complaint boxes were emptied and never sorted, where challenges to Inquest activity could die with plausible deniability, and the accountability fell on the shoulders of a photogenic, earnest, and well-meaning PR head that would always take one for the team. 'Magistrix' was a title Kezza took to heart, but to the Inquest, she was a scapegoat at very best. In the RP ecosystem at the time, I didn't see anyone else pave this kind of path. Most Inquest affiliates were blatantly evil scientists, assassins, rogue experiments, and the odd mercenary or bookish nerd. I wanted to bring something different to the table, and broaden the avenues of RP for those interested.

Over the years Kezza climbed ranks, along with her subkrewe, and gained more and more responsibilities, up to earning (and a few times losing) her namesake title of Magistrix. The whole while, she was more and more invested in her subkrewe, her little department of Inquest 'baddies' whose lives were now her responsibility, and constantly under threat. Her life changed, over and over again-- She even had a kid! But her dedication to the metakrewe never faltered.

Why, is sort of strange to reflect on. I was always open to and even expected to some day find an RP encounter that would shake her, even if a little. A character to challenge her beliefs, or maybe just patient enough to say that hey, fascism is bad actually! Or that through some happenstance, she'd see an error in her ways, and be forced to recalibrate around difficult truths.

What happened instead was Kezza witnessing the violence levied on her subkrewe directly, on herself, on her family. On good days, asuraphobic slurs were an everyday reminder that she and her people were not welcome, even as other races made use of asuran tech or took asuran partners. She became more insular, more skeptical, more fearful.

Between her lived reality and the kool-aid she'd been sipping since college, I didn't see a way out for Kezza. She never lost her good heart, but the things she's had to see and do and sign off on are not things she'd have done if she knew there was a better way. And I know its corrosive.

I'd like to keep playing her, I think, if only to see where her story ends. Does she ever overcome and escape the Inquest? Does someone ever put her out of her misery? Does she grow to someday fully embrace the evil she's been serving?

I'm never really one to RP with goals in mind. Characters gonna character. Whatever happens, happens. But I'm still so curious about this little goblin's journey, and especially in the year 2025, I'm particularly drawn to her story again.

I haven't looked at how much the latest expansion packs cost, because I am broke, but I'm hearing rumors that make me reconsider leaving GW2 completely. Kezza and my other characters are still important to me and all have stories to experience.