OOC: Angelii Essay

[whohastimeforthat]

Change can be both a good and a bad thing. Given his time in Nautilus thus far, Azmuth can certainly attest to that...though unfortunately a lot of it has not been for the better from his perspective.

Not long before he'd arrived in Nautilus, he'd been forced to admit to sins long-buried that had darkened his view of his universe centuries if not millennia before what's considered the present day. He'd been forced to reveal the existence of a sword he'd made with the power to cut through reality, his intentions having been good but that meaning nothing in the face of the destruction it had caused. That in turn had brought to mind the initial failure of the Omnitrix along with how his message in a bottle to the being he still loved even after centuries of separation had been twisted into something terrible. He'd spent untold decades basically waiting to die and had even initially embraced the end of the universe six years prior to present time because, in his eyes, there was no hope. He'd spent the past six years moving forward, trying to put his past behind him, only to have it come up again. Getting a sneak peek "behind-the-scenes" had been a relief. As much work as he'd had to do back home, he'd been grateful for the opportunity to get away from reminders of the past until the wounds could scab over enough that he could ignore their lingering aches and pains once again. He'd predicted things would get better.

Instead, they'd gotten so much worse.

When Ursaems destroyed the world of Pink's Clues, the Deva also revealed his intentions to destroy the multiverse. With cool logic, Ursaems dismissed the angered protests of the citizens of Nautilus, countering each emotional argument with a logical one of his own.

Azmuth had not been one of the ones objecting to the end. Instead, he'd been paralyzed because every one of Ursaems' arguments was one of his own for why his own universe should cease existing. Just as he'd told Ben Tennyson six years before, he was still deciding whether or not to end his universe's stay of execution, and he overall hadn't seen much improvement between then and now. Rather than join the fight, he stayed to the sidelines and witnessed the Fall of Kalliste rather than fleeing to safety just as he hadn't attempted to find some way to escape when the prototype Omnitrix had been preparing to self-destruct and take the rest of the universe with it.

His intense shame regarding his decision not to act festered, for the Deva's actions had planted a seed of doubt in his mind concerning his own judgment. On a whim, he wished for someone else to take the lead for once and simply tell him what needed to be done. Unfortunately, Nautilus heard and granted it, rewriting Azmuth's memories so that he believed that his people had never freed themselves from their chains. He lived as a pet with Michael Morningstar aka "Darkstar", working on building a mana generator so that his new master didn't have to feed so much on the general populous. However, life energy can't be so easily created from nothing, and Azmuth's attempts were ultimately failures. It wasn't until the reality storm in which the residents of Nautilus saw bad endings to their lives back home that Azmuth saw a vision that shattered the illusion and forced him to accept what he saw as the only real truth: His own master or not, someone would always take his good intentions and use them to destroy others.

When Areva fell to a strange infection that turned her into a tree practically in his backyard, Azmuth decided to be proactive, taking time to study her and even managing to use both her and Rex Salazar's infection data to devise a test to recognize infected Wakened at the earliest stages. He shared his data with other labs, not caring if he was the one to discover the cure or not; all he wanted was a cure to be discovered to protect those few in Nautilus that he felt didn't deserve the fate of becoming vegetation.

Unfortunately, all of his careful preparations and biohazard precautions had been for naught when he himself became infected and apparently passed it on to Jiminy Cricket. He'd later watched as the cricket transformed into a tree right before his eyes, the latest victim of his own good intentions. Presented with further proof that his talents laid more toward unintentional mayhem, Azmuth ceased his work completely and was hesitant to return to scientific research and invention much like during his self-imposed exile on the planet Xenon, a planet he'd surrounded in artificial darkness to prevent others from reaching him. The guilt that he'd spent six years trying to get past was starting to swallow him whole again.

And then he discovered that the invention that had led to his original downward spiral was in Nautilus.

Ascalon, the sword Azmuth had built in his younger years, had been sleeping in the volcano on the volcanic island in the Eastern District after Ben Tennyson had surrendered it to the former mercenary known as Six. When it sensed more of Azmuth's technology about, it called to its creator, and Azmuth went to it. Despite the pain Bending caused him, Azmuth changed the sword so that it was Galvan-sized and stowed it in a dimensional sheath that was always anchored on his person so that it'd be much harder to steal. He then returned home, intending for no one to ever learn of its presence and, by extension, what he'd done so many centuries ago.

Unfortunately, Azmuth's secrets started getting out via subconscious Bending amplified by Ascalon. Over the course of several weeks, unnatural darkness filled the swamp and the ghosts of his victims started to wander about. Some came to the swamp to find out what was going on, Jiminy coming regularly. Again and again, Azmuth turned them away, at first finding reasonable excuses to get them to back away. However, the presence of the ghosts in the swamp whispering away and demanding an answer for why they were dead, haunted him and ensured that what sleep he did get was haunted with nightmares. To try and avoid them, Azmuth forced himself to stay awake for as long as he could, the sleep deprivation taking its toll on his body along with further fueling his subconscious Bending. Each attempt to keep others at bay only made the problem worse.

In the end, all his efforts meant nothing as the walking corpses attempted to enter the tower and citizens of Nautilus came demanding an answer. Exhausted to the point where the very idea of fighting was too draining, Azmuth finally confessed, revealing not just his sins but how little hope for the multiverse that he had left. Despite such obvious proof that Azmuth was very much of the same mindset as Ursaems, Jiminy reminded Azmuth of why he'd saved his own universe from its destruction by the Omnitrix: the hope that perhaps something or someone would prove him wrong. With the last of his remaining energy and the assistance of those who'd gathered in the tower to help, Azmuth undid the changes to the swamp.

He spent almost the entirety of the next month sleeping off the damage he'd done to himself and regaining his strength. In his moments of wakefulness, he studied up on music boxes, wanting to create the perfect gift to express his gratitude to Jiminy in particular for not giving up when so many would've as well as an advanced apology for the likelihood that he'd push the cricket to the limits of his patience. Azmuth's personality still leaves much to be desired, due to failing to learn a very important piece of social interaction in his youth several millennia ago.

On Galvan Prime, intellect is king, and Azmuth proved himself to be the smartest of an entire species of geniuses when he'd passed his GATs as a tadpole, an unheard of occurrence likely to have been thought impossible. This isolated him from his peers since he was so far ahead of them that not just the Galvans but the entire Milky Way and four additional galaxies have a massive amount of catching up to do. Friends and friendship were so far out of his zone of expertise that they weren't even in the rear view mirror of his life. Love had blindsided him and then he'd lost his beloved's affections due to his own stupidity of allowing his intellect to dominate his life.

Yet Jiminy, intentionally or not, has started teaching him to be a friend by being a friend. While he secretly thinks of Ben as a friend (if not his best friend) back home, their relationship had initially been purely professional, each using the other: Ben to fix the prototype Omnitrix and offer advice; Azmuth to give him enough hope to keep his finger off the proverbial detonator. However, despite their initial meeting in which Azmuth attempted to eat the cricket by mistake, Jiminy cared for him and even spent time with him not because he was a valuable resource but simply because he was Azmuth, for better or for worse. While Azmuth isn't always the best at reciprocating, he's learning and has allowed his prickly facade to drop around Jiminy more often than not.

On top of that, the entire incident in the swamp has forced him to start reaching out for help. It's due to the help of Nita that he realizes that his Bending block is purely psychosomatic. After all, as someone who figured out the ins and outs of Bending without even being Awake, he should be ahead of the game in Nautilus, but each time he Bends he ends up with a headache if not a crippling migraine. Nita pointed out to him that it was likely because of the guilt he was carrying regarding his unintentional victims that was holding him back given that the knowledge he'd gained had been paid for in blood. The guilt is still fresh and haunts him though it's not escaping via his Bending anymore, but it's still holding him back. It'll likely take a lot of time for him to let it all go since it's been a part of him for millennia, but the fact that there are people who're willing to reach out despite his inclination to bristle up and snap at them could help him start to learn to loosen his grip on that pain and potentially start to forgive himself.

In short, Azmuth has come so far on his own over his past several thousand years of life, but his time in Nautilus has taught him that he can only go so far on his own. He may never be a friendly and open person, but it's thanks to the people around him who are willing to reach out to him that he's starting to face the ugliest parts of himself to become a better person, not just a better scientist.