[OOC: Character Application for Pegasus J Crawford

[i2ceo.livejournal.com]

Mickey coughs theatrically. "'What is your name?'"

"Pegasus J. Crawford," the tall silver-haired man pauses, and preens a little, as if, really, people ought to start admiring him now. He smiles at the mouse, "next question?"


"What is your quest?" asks the Cat. It's perched, suddenly, on the roof of one of the gate-stiles.

Startled, Pegasus looks away from Mickey, glancing around aimlessly, until he finds the Cat up on the roof. He recovers his poise quickly. "Do I have to have one dear boy?" Stifling a yawn elegantly, "I did all that once, so tiresome."

"'What is the average w..?'" Mickey frowns down at the notebook. "You know, I don't really see why that's important." He flips a page. "'If you could be granted three wishes, what would they be?'"

If he thought he could catch Pegasus so easily, Mickey was sadly mistaken, "that’s easy," he says in a cheerful tone, "a white wine spritzer, Kaiba Seto, and an idea for a new Toon Monster." He smiles smugly before adding "not necessarily in that order."

His gaze moves past Mickey and the Cat, fixing on the gate in the background; really, this place is perfectly delicious, a whole Toon World, right at his very fingertips. Now if only these two would stop talking, he could go in and explore. "Are there many more questions?" Pegasus murmurs, "I’d like..." He is interrupted as the Cat speaks.

"Or," the Cat says, examining its tail with interest, "if you were a genie and someone you were trying to
give three wishes to was trying to trick you into giving him more, what would you say?"

"How about What will you give me in exchange for that," Pegasus is getting bored now, and he speaks quickly, not trying as hard to amuse, "we might work out something mutually satisfactory, a quid pro quo of some kind..."

Mickey looks rather nonplused at the next, but reads, "'When the revolution comes, what skills will you be able to barter for food?'"

"Oh I’ll take over of course," Pegasus strains to see past Mickey’s shoulder, not that he’s seen any actual cartoon characters yet, but they have to be in there, don’t they? "I’ll subvert the revolution, and make them build me a castle and uniformed slaves can wait on me." He smiles as politely as he can, "is there anything more?"

The Cat rolls its eyes in a friendly (and rather disconcertingly out-of-sync) way, and asks, "Milk, dark, or white chocolate?"

"Dark," Pegasus’ tone is quite offhand by now, and he’s staring quite openly over Mickey Mouse’s shoulder, "it goes nicely with red wine." With a pained sigh, he waves his hand, trying to hurry the interrogation along.

"'Choose the two coolest: robots, pirates, fairies, bears, ninjas, monkeys, vampires, or humans,'" says Mickey, giggling a bit as he goes through the list. "'Explain.'"

"Bears," Pegasus says, "definitely bears," he isn’t even trying any more, just staring toward the gate, trying to see inside, "oh and pirates, and preferably together." His tone very positive, "I don’t know how many times," he says, "I’ve found myself longing to see a nice group of pirates together with some... What were those other things I said? Fairies, wasn’t it? Yes, they do go so nicely those two."

"Great!" Mickey flips through the blank pages of the notebook at top, cartoon-y speed. "Well, I think that's just about it! Oh, and I'm supposed to ask, 'for your safety: are you carrying anything sharp?'"

"Then I’m done?" Pegasus clasps his hands, "I can finally go in? How positively delightful, you don’t know how fun this is going to be for me," he turns to Mickey, putting out his hand with great enthusiasm, "thank you, dear boy, you have totally made my day." He’s already headed toward the gate when he looks back for a moment, adding "oh and by the way, no to your last question. I never carry my own weapons."

[Pegasus is from the Yuugiou/Yugioh! anime series, specifically from Yuguoh! The Movie, after he’s lost the Sen-nen Eye.]

Comments

[i2ceo.livejournal.com]

Time must be very strange indeed here, Pegasus thinks; from the sound of it, the second to arrive hasn't been here as long as Crowley, who talks about having been here thirteen years. It's rather hard to think of anything to say, and he finds himself opening and closing his mouth like a guppy fish.

Finally, "you're very philosophical," Pegasus murmurs, raising his own hand, and touching Psyche's on his shoulder, "how did you manage to become so wise, at such a young age?" he asks, looking into her youthful face.

[late-born-myth.livejournal.com]

He looks rather more disconcerted than her last words seem to necessitate, and Psyche's about to tell Pegasus about her arrival, a few hours after Crowley's. But then he asks his question and she has to laugh.

"Young people are often philosophical, really, if not nearly as often cheerful in their philosophies. I was, at any rate, when I was a mortal. But I'm a great deal older than I appear to be, so I've had centuries to build up my sense of humor." She smiles. "Are you much acquainted with Greco-Roman mythology?"

[i2ceo.livejournal.com]

"Centuries," Pegasus echoes, "have you really?" This is, of course, the most disconcerting thing Psyche's said yet; it's not that he hasn't dealt with centuries-old people before; it's not even that they looked so much older than she does, but so far they've all been reincarnated, not so much perpetually young-looking as inhabiting young bodies. It's a long moment before he answers her question.

"I ...I've read some mythology," translated, this means I started reading after my wife died, and stopped as soon as I figured out it wasn't likely to have any ways for me to raise the dead in it, "more Egyptian," he says, "but yes, some Greco-Roman."

"Why, Psyche?"

[late-born-myth.livejournal.com]

"Well," she says, with a smile that isn't so much sheepish as an invitation to share amusement at the peculiarity of the whole thing, "that's my pantheon. My husband's family. You'll have heard of Eros - Cupid, the Romans called him? He married me when I was a mortal girl, about two thousand six hundred years ago, and after various...adventures, you might say, I was made a goddess as well."

Another one of those smiles. "Quite a minor one, of course. And don't worry, I'm not in the habit of turning people into trees or rivers."

[i2ceo.livejournal.com]

Pegasus takes a step backward involuntarily, because in his world gods tend to do horrible things to people. Not that Psyche looks like she's going to; and she's already said she doesn't turn people into trees or rivers anyhow, but that does leave an awful lot of things unmentioned that she might do to them instead.

"...Were you really," he asks her, "it works like that in your world?" He searches for something to say, and finally adds "do you enjoy being a goddess?"

[late-born-myth.livejournal.com]

Other gods in her pantheon aren't exactly free of a propensity for doing horrible things, so Psyche doesn't really take offense at the mistrust. She tries, instead to look reassuring.

"It doesn't exactly work like that as a matter of course; it just happened that way in my particular case. Normally someone only became a deity if they already had some sort of demi-divinity, in lineage or power; there are a few of us who were beloved of various gods and granted immortality to allow us to stay with them, but unlike Ariadne or Ganymede I was made a goddess as well." She shrugs, her wings fluttering a bit. "I enjoy being able to help people, sometimes. I try to be something of a mediator between mortalkind and gods. And of course I'm grateful not to have died millenia ago, in war or childbed or disease. Of course I enjoy being given all that. But the most important thing about all of that is being able to stay by my husband's side, to help and comfort him, to..." She breaks off, then, and smiles with misery gleaming momentarily in the corners of her eyes. "He's not here, you see."

[i2ceo.livejournal.com]

"My god, I'm so sorry," there are two things Pegasus has just noticed, and only one of them, the fact that Psyche is unhappy, seems to need commenting on right now. "How lonely for ...both of you," he tells her, "it's terrible not being together with someone you love." He says it with all sincerity, women, in his opinion, ought not to be unhappy, and, if they are, they ought to be comforted; if he can't help staring at those fluttering wings of hers the whole time he's talking, well, that's not really his fault. Pegasus has never met anyone with wings before.

[late-born-myth.livejournal.com]

"It is," she says. "But thank you. And I'm sure I'll find a way to return to him, or he'll find a way to come here. We've been separated before, when I...during those adventures I mentioned, and we found each other again." Of course, the difference there was that Eros had, in fact, known where Psyche was and what she was doing, while here...she didn't even know if he knew this place existed. But none of that is under Pegasus's control, so she tries to cheer up.

Noticing the direction of his gaze, she spreads her wings out flush to display them. "They're a bit unusual, aren't they? They appeared when I was made a goddess. Sort of a simultaneous metaphor and pun, I suppose, since my name in Greek means 'butterfly.'"

[i2ceo.livejournal.com]

"They're positively beautiful," belatedly, Pegasus realizes he is staring, and he looks back at Psyche's face, "you say they were given to you?" He smiles. "Did they give you power over something as a goddess too," he added, "something uplifting to go with your beautiful wings?"

...Psyche is unhappy; she's pretending she isn't, but she is. "It's never easy to be separated from someone you love," this time Pegasus is the one to touch her hand lightly, "I'm sorry it had to happen to you."

[late-born-myth.livejournal.com]

"No, it isn't," she says, squeezing his hand briefly. "And I'm very sorry you've had the experience to know how true that is."

"As for my powers...I'm the goddess and personification of the mortal soul, so I have a few powers related to that, as well as some basic godlike abilities. That's the other meaning of 'psyche,' you see: 'soul.' Honestly, I'm not sure whether Zeus intended to assign me any particular area of influence or whether it just happened when I was granted powers; he only said something about hoping I would keep Eros out of trouble from now on, which would, really, require divine puissance. At least." She smiles. "The wings were a surprise for everyone, really, they just sprang into being. I spent the first few centuries on Olympus knocking them into things."

[i2ceo.livejournal.com]

"Now we're both being philosophical," Pegasus says, returning the pressure of her hand. His voice is serious, just a little too serious, and it's a relief to turn to lighter subjects.

Or at least to more distracting ones. "Where I come from we have doctors called psychologists," he says, "I guess you could say they minister to peoples' souls. At any rate, they certainly spend a lot of time..." He catches himself just before he can say keeping Eros out of trouble, and finishes lamely "it takes a lot of wisdom to do anything meaningful with a soul."

[late-born-myth.livejournal.com]

She dimples. "Of course, psychologists and psychiatrists are in some sense my acolytes. I was never very widely worshipped, you know; in all honesty it makes me a little uncomfortable and I'd rather the praise be given to my husband, who's much more fond of it," and who tended to be made more good-natured by it, and thus less inclined to do something appalling. "Besides, I was born after the time of most legends, and was adopted mostly by mystery religions and poets. Though the Christians did rather take to me as an allegory, and there was a vogue for sculpting or painting me in the 19th century. Of course, using me as a subject was usually mostly an excuse to portray a pretty girl in classical trappings - and I don't know where they got the idea that I was naked quite that often - but nevertheless."

"But it's very interesting to me, seeing the different interpretations people come up with over the years, and the different ways they've found to...as you say, do something meaningful with their souls. I wouldn't say it takes so much wisdom to have a meaningful effect, you know, but it's hard to predict what that effect will be. That used to be very largely the province of religion - certainly it was when I was young - but the philosophy that's developed about it is fascinating. To me, at any rate; most of the gods aren't what you'd normally call analytical."

[i2ceo.livejournal.com]

Pegasus is not normally what you'd call analytical either, and he's finding, about now, that goddesses can be rather dauntingly wise. At least Psyche can, which is probably why they gave her the job they did.

Whoever they were. ...Or are... "I've seen a few of the interpretations of you," he says, mostly because it seems good manners to say something, "they're very beautiful."

Substituting charm for relevance, which has served him fairly well on occasion, "they none of them did justice to you though," he says.