View source for Legacies... And How To Save Them (Corona)

{{Cutscene Header
|Date of Scene=2016/11/08
|Location=Corona's Workshop - Brimsteel
|Synopsis=Dealing with aftermath of Nexus PartI
|Cast of Characters=711
|Tinyplot=Moeru
}}
Corona was not exactly someone known for keeping a level temperment. But as the events had unfolded in the Nexus in the most terrible way possible and she saw how her friends were reacting, she forced down her own emotions for the sake of trying to keep them in check, as much as she wanted to shove Ijiwara's sword up his own ass sideways for what he had done like everyone else.

Emotions running hot tend to cloud out judgement. Make a person do things they normally wouldn't out of anger and grief. It puts a person down a dark and bitter road... A road Corona knows all too well herself. The varmit would get his due. But there was a very fine, often blurry line between Justice and Revenge.

She wasn't going to let her friends cross it recklessly. Or perpetuate the cycle by being consumed as that varmit was.

So it wasn't until she was in the privacy of her den beneath the workshop in Loadstar that Corona finally let out the angry, frustrated howl she had been keeping bottled up and slammed a fist into the wall. Fortunately she was still wearing her battle gloves so it did more damage to the wall than her knuckles.

Afterward she just stood there, one fist to the wall, head bowed in heavy breaths. She had her suspicions from the start, but by the time all the pieces finally started falling out of the shadows, Ijiwaru's gambit was already clamped down on them. It wasn't just about getting Yunomi. Otherwise he would of just done this at the beginning like the smarmy sidewinder he was. No, all the suffering he had caused Rhapsody was part of it. All the turmoil being stirred up in the city. Corona knew his sort well enough. Yunomi's death wasn't enough... He wouldn't stop until he destroyed everything she and the ones she loved ones had lived for.

Her legacy.

Finally Corona pulled her fist from the wall and trudged across the den, removing the gloves and tossing them aside. She sulked over to the hammock that served as her bed when she didn't just doze off in the shop, but rather than collapsing in it the fox turned to pick up something from the stand next to it. A battered old book, the leatherbound covers showing their age and wear. The only thing she had of her real father and the legacy he had left her.

Corona hugged the book to her chest as a few tears finally managed to trickle past the corners of her eyes. She knew how Rhapsody felt, having her loved one stripped away from her -- twice now. She had only been a kit when she lost her family because of that sabotaged shuttle and the mercs that came to search the wreckage; surviving only because she had been pushed somewhere safe by her folks, and when the bandits found her they didn't have the heart to shoot a kid in cold blood. They dumped her off at an orphanage instead, figuring no one would ever knew who she was. But she had run away from there, too bitter and angry at the world for taking away everything she'd had, and living off the dirty streets of Brimsteel. Until Ol' Rusty had found her, and put her back on the right path. Gave her a life again; more importantly, gave her a purpose.

And then his legacy, when he'd given her his surname and his place as the Depot's head machinist.

Much like Niv-Mizzet had left his trio of dragonlings his life's work of the Izzet League, after giving himself to protect it and them. Like he and they had taken in a wayward tanuki, and eventually put her on the path to accomplishing a thing no one thought possible, even if it had been at the worst point in her life.

Now those Legacies faced their own ends.

... Or did they?

Abruptly a bolt shot through her, Corona's head snapping up as she was jerked out of her remorse by it. It was a spark, a gut feeling, a... something. But suddenly she felt some of that exhausted energy coming back to her as fingers tighted around the journal. "No..." In a flurry she spun on her heels with battered book in hand still, storming through the den, back to the stairs. "No no NO!" There was no one but the clockworks to hear her defiance, but she did not care.

The end was what he wanted. Come hell and high water, guilds or no guilds, she wasn't going to let it happen. Or at least die with her boots on trying.

"Your father always had a saying," Rusty had told her when he finally gave Corona that journal. "You can't fix the past... But you can always build a better future." He had kept that journal hidden away, not giving it to her until he'd known she'd grown enough to really understand what that meant. To continue making a good life for herself helping others, rather than wallowing in bitter shadows of the past.

Corona practically flew up the flight of stairs and back into the smithery. The journal was flopped on a workbench and flung open, pages flipped to earlier in the book. Old yellow pages that were chronicled in the early days, when her father and Rusty had still been in the steamcore militia together. Not anything she could really use directly, but it was a source of guidance all the same. Of inspiration. A reminder of the legacies, the hope she still had.

The hope they needed now. Ijiwaru had broken Rhapsody, broken Yonumi, broken everyone's spirits. Both the guilds and the guildless were restless, pointing fingers, throwing blame, ready to toss nooses around each other's necks. He was assured he had already won when he started this mania. He thought he had control of the game, already holding all the good cards... Which meant it was time to stop playing on his terms, by his rules.

Corona pulled off the broken, cracked goggles from the fight and tossed them in a wastebasket. A step on a pedal hidden under the workbench slid open a drawer of fresh new goggles, ready to be put to use. She grabbed a pair, letting the drawer slide shut again as she took off her hat and after hanging it aside put the goggles atop her head.

"Fire up the forges Tinderbox!" The clockwork cube gave an irritated sputter-click that she was suppose to be resting, but trundled off to do as told. "Ah know, but there's work to be done." Work, a purpose, was still her coping mechanism. Change doesn't just come. Change is made. YOU make change. That was what the Izzet League did. They made change. They innovated, for the better. Not themselves, but others, even those that didn't respect them for it, that RELIED on them for it. Niv-Mizzet had made change happen, and left ways for others to keep making it happen for him. Made her wish she'd been around when he still was, but that's not important right now.

"Iffen it's a fight for the city that varmit wants..."

Corona pulled the goggles down over her eyes finally, the red-orange glow of the magma-fueled furnaces firing up reflecting off the lenses.

"It's a bloody fraggin' *war* he's gonna get."

Legacies don't die.

Sometimes they do get broken... But that's when you reforge them.