[hider=Colab with Magi]Richie was putting on a more appropriate pair of clothes after his minor freak-out resulted in the outfit he had been wearing becoming less than desirable at the moment. He was still in a bad place as he went back to the computer. 

To his surprise there had been a reply to his message. 
- - -
From: Conquest Pantheon
To: Stalwart Bruiser
Subject: Re: What you said...

Very well. I’ll be waiting in the library.
- - -
He grinned, allowing himself to feel one victory in the travesty that the day had been. Honestly, part of him felt like giving up as well, just to desert the Ivory Masks and live out the rest of his game time anonymously. He had enough kills to live out his life better than he could ever imagine, but what exactly would that make him? He was already a pariah to many of the people he was trying to protect, why not become the bad guy while he was at it? It wasn't like it was out of character, if the last White King was anything to go by. 

Richie put his head in his hands, the start of a headache creeping up on him. He pushed himself away from the computer and it's increasingly annoying glare. Going back near his bed to put on a jacket. He needed to talk this out with another King, but he wasn't exactly excited with letting his identity be known. Thus, the use of a color-coded hood would have to suffice in place of a username. 

Now properly dressed and just barely keeping his face hidden in a hood, Richie made his way out of his room, making a beeline to the library. 

Thankfully, he didn't pass much of his peers on his way, entering the room with a wild glance around to make sure no one he knew was there. Aside from another group that seemed more preoccupied with their own conversation and the librarian of course, it was mostly empty. 
By his logic, that meant that the Orange King was somewhere there. Perhaps disguised as he was, more than likely better. Or he could be the guy sitting by himself just out of his line of sight. Richie bit his lower lip, half in consideration and half in annoyance at missing such a thing.

Deciding to go for it, he circled the other young man until he was walking towards him and not from behind. He wasn't looking to make the wrong first impression. 

Taking a seat a table away from the potential Orange King, Richie stared from beneath his hood, waiting for a response of some sort. 

Aaron resisted the urge to roll his eyes as a person that was hiding their face in a white hoodie took a seat nearby. Honestly, what was the point? Aaron hadn't even bothered to try hiding his identity, partly because he never had before and partly because he wanted people to know who he was as part of his plan.

"So I take it you're the White King?" As he asked, the Orange King's crystal blue eyes searched the person from top to bottom. He couldn't tell the other person's identity. Oh well, he didn't particularly care.

"Who wants to know?" Richie asked in a gruff tone. Really, it was all he could think of to disguise his rather high pitched voice. But in hindsight, it sounded more like he was trying to impersonate Batman if anything. Still, he stuck with it. 

"Orange King?" He asked, taking his own glance at his fellow King. His peer was on the scrawny side, which wasn't much of a surprise. He figured he could take him if things went bad.

"Orange King, Conquest Pantheon, Aaron Carther. Feel free to use whichever name you wish, though I find the second to be too much of a mouthful to use in conversation."

Aaron got up and took a seat directly across from the White King. He'd like to know who it was he was speaking to, but he could wait for that. Even if this person wasn't the real White King, Aaron didn't plan on saying anything that it would matter if someone else heard. 

Aaron put on a reassuring smile even though his eyes didn't change at all and asked again, "So I take it you are the White King?"

"Well, no duh." Richie gave an exaggerated point to his hood and jacket, making it seem like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "No one else is going to wear all of this white." He forced mirth into his words, trying to act like he normally would with friends. 

"Unlike you, Aaron," He said the Orange King's name as if testing how it felt leaving his mouth, leaning back in his chair to convey some sense of nonchalance, "Some of us don't want to be well known, but you can call me Bruiser." 

He let his chair fall foward without so much as a flinch, stretching out his hand for Aaron to shake.

The Orange King rested his head on his hand, leaving the other King hanging. The small reassuring smile on his face changed to a frown of disapproval as he got down to why he'd agreed to meet with this failure of a King.

"Fine, I didn't agree to meet with you to try to figure out your identity or make friends. I agreed to meet you so that I could tell you to your face just how bad you fucked up today."

Richie's face fell at those words, what could be seen by his companion would just be a thin grim line taking the place of his forced grin. The same surge of anger he had felt earlier welled up inside of him again, but he didn't see any point in acting on it. 

He had done something unforgivable to try and retain what little hope he had instilled in his former guild members. If this was what he had to face as penance for it, well he'd just have take it. Of course, he still looked at the Orange King as best he could, responding in his real voice, "I know." [/hider]

[hider=2]Aaron sighed, glad that the other boy had finally stopped using that incredibly stupid fake voice. It was a step in the right direction.

"I take it you saw dissolving the Ivory Masks as a way of somehow protecting them from the Ebony Strykers, as a way to prevent having what happened to the Fanged Rangers happen to your guild? Unfortunately, you only made the situation worse for those you wanted to protect. In other words, you are a complete failure as a King."

Richie had been listening intently, focused on everything Aaron had to say. Like a child being scolded by their parent. He was a failure, but he wasn't just going to let him say that what he did was for nothing. 

"You're wrong about them, I saved them. And I'll get them back, as soon as I kill Moon Rider." He let the rage he had been suppressing flow into his words, the Black King was always a belligerent topic for him, even before all of what had transpired. He tried to keep his voice down as best he could. "[i]She's[/i] a failure too, a bigger one than me even. She probably thinks the Ivory Masks are gone, but I'm still here. I'm still a King dammit."

"So you think that you can fix everything you've fucked up so royally by simply killing Moon Rider?" Aaron chuckled at his peer's stupidity. "There are many things that Moon Rider is, and many more that i would like to call her to her face, but failure is not one of them."

The Orange King held up a finger as if he was going to draw out his words for the other boy to understand. "The Black King controlled a region of the Faded City for who knows how long with only herself when the other guilds had hundreds if not thousands of members; she then managed to form a guild with numbers above and beyond any of the others in less than a month, allowing her to take on not just one or two neighboring guilds, but all of them, at once; furthermore she managed just today to wipe a single guild off the face of the world in minutes. This all disregards the fact that she has shown to have a person capable of hacking and recoding the very world of Deep Ground Online as she wishes, but it shows that she is not simply not a failure, but that Moon Rider is likely the single most competent ruler in Deep Ground Online's long history of Kings."

Shifting his attention from his finger to where he expected the White King's eyes were, Aaron stabbed into the space hidden by the boy's hood with his eyes. "You on the other hand, are exactly as I said: a failure. You have dissolved your guild, and therefor have no right to the title of King at this point. Should you reclaim the title in the future, that is up to you, but right now you are simply a little boy who fled from a superior opponet and left his friends and those who trusted him behind." The words were only reinforced by the complete and utter lack of hostility behind them. For all the emotion he was putting into his words, Aaron may as well have been reading from an instruction manual.

Word after word broke down Richie's lingering resolve and rage. Aaron was right about all of it, and he just couldn't process why that was. If he was the boy he was two days prior, he would have cracked some joke about the 'breaking' speech and move on with his life. Now however, he just slowly began to remove his hood. 

It didn't matter if the Orange King saw his face, it didn't matter that he could feel tears blurring the edges of his vision. He wasn't a King, he was just a kid over his head, one that had screwed up more than he knew. With a shaky exhale, he tried to compose himself, keep from showing anymore weakness than he already had. It was pathetic, but it was all he could accomplish in such a state.[/hider]

[hider=3.] "What..What do I do then?" He asked meekly, trying to stare into the Orange King's eyes. A general sense of defeat and despair in the look. He broke himself partway, Aaron had finished the job. "How do I fix it?"

Aaron tried not to show any reaction to seeing the White King's face. Orange hair, brown eyes, someone Aaron thought he might have seen around campus but whose name he couldn't remember off the top of his head. He could find the boy's name easily enough later on by looking through the roster though, now that he had seen his face. Oh, there was something wrong with the boy's face. Was he... crying? Damn, had he gone too far? He'd still had more to say too. Oh well, he'd give the kid a break.

"I would have expected this of the Green King, but for the White King to get like this after just a few unkind criticisms," Aaron let out a sigh and softened his demeanor some. "I think you've let your Ivory Mask slip."

"One thing you have to have realized after seeing the dissolutions spawn atop the corpse of the green guild's territory is that Moon Rider is hacking the game. Thus, there is absolutely no way for us or for anyone to beat her on that side. At most, attacking her and the Ebony Strykers is a way to distract her for a few minutes a day until she decides to kill you."

"If we can't win inside the game, we have no choice but to pursue out-of-game alternatives, as I had said in the very beginning. As powerful as she is in the game, on this side Moon rider is nothing but a little girl. All we have to do is pull back the curtain on her true identity and everything after is easy. You've likely heard the long-spoken rumor that the Student President, Yoshino Tsugumi, is actually the Black King and not merely her spokeswoman. I personally find this rumor to be a likely truth and am attempting to find out if it actually is."

Aaron lay his hand on the red book he'd taken to carrying around with him. "While I don't think that I'm wrong, the possibility exists. The only way to be sure is to hear it from her own mouth. If you truly wish to help end this war and restore your guild in safety, the solution is really quite simple."

The Orange King smiled and met the other boy's eyes directly. "All you have to do is join the Ebony Strykers."

Richie just stared. There was no visible reaction or emotion on his face, aside from the remnants of his break down. He was unsure of how to react to anything at all anymore. There was only the single reason he became King, and that was to be a hero. Heroes sacrificed, he knew that quite well, but he didn't know what they did when faced with such a choice. 

The Orange King was correct of course, because he always seemed to be correct. At least, as far as this conversation went. What happens to a hero who is destined to fight, made to turn tail and become defeated? What does he become?

Aaron gave Richie that answer, and it brought back that surefire grin that always grew on his lips. It was for a wrong reason now, it felt wrong to him, yet it was all he had now. Joining the Strykers wouldn't be easy, but he had the perfect cover story to show his loyalty. He was the destroyer of the Ivory Masks, they'd be hard-pressed to let him go. 

Getting up from his seat, Richie felt his knees wobble, his head was threatening to pound once more; but he never seen a more clearer path than now. 

"If that's what it takes, then I'm going to have to go far. You do realize we may become enemies in the game, right?" He asked Aaron without losing his new-found mirth. He would probably need to sleep before doing anything else, he was too excitable at the moment. 

Aaron gave his new ally a thin smile. "If that is the case, simply know that I won't be able to hold back, and neither can you. If either of us hesitate or soften our blows even a little, it will all be for nothing. We may not be enemies right now, but next we meet in-game, we will have to fight with everything we have."

He stood as well and picked up his book from the table. "It should be interesting to see which of us is stronger, but who knows, it might not even come to that."

"Maybe when this is all over, you and I can have a real fight. No Black King or anything hanging over our heads." Richie laughed at the idea, staring at the Orange King now, he couldn't see him in anything too physical. However, he wasn't so sure in-game. Especially with how he portrays himself. Aaron was right once again, it [i]would[/i] be interesting. At least, if it ever happened. 

"Thanks for talking to me either way." He said with a nod of his head as he started to move away from the table, having more than enough to think about when he would wake up next. Stopping momentarily to add an afterthought, "We'll beat her, I know we will." 

Aaron waited until the White King was out of earshot. "Maybe."[/hider]