Bureaucracy required it, however. Between the Negaverse's vastness and its lacking application for algorithms, a request's submission to its approval or denial could take days. Weeks, if the request complicated matters. Longer if situational blunders plugged an already cluttered thoroughfare. The information highway knew no great change with chaos and supernatural secrecy. Faustite still needed to pass the days and bide his time on the verdict for a new identity.
A new identity. The thought sat ill with him and exuberantly exciting all the same. The Negaverse, purveyors of impossibilities, held the power in palm to overwrite a person's entire identity from their legal holdings to a simple, interpersonal recognition of parent and child. No one would — could — recognize him for Elex Yorke by the Negaverse's power, much like how no one would recognize Rowan Cameron out of Heliodor, or professed Aelius Drayson. It's a wonder they hadn't yet ensconced themselves in all the passed dreams of their cattle, their amassed victims.
Finally the day came to light that his summons was issued, his request accepted. No punishment mentioned, but the loss of his life and earned history as Elex Yorke was itself a punishment. Maybe Axinite saw no need for more.
Strange, he thought, to see him again now. Asking for help twice over.
Faustite perished the thought beyond the General-Sovereign's door. His strange humor remembered, his pause recalled when he made observation of Rowan's wakefulness. The power pushed through all that made Rowan who he was until only personality and a fracture of memory remaimed. Effects without causes. Results without the process. All the rest a broken man with a penchant for learned helplessness.
He entered with all the expectations he held for generals. He stood at attention fore the desk, back ramrod straight, greeting waiting on the tongue for leave to answer. The loss of it all neatly compartmentalized and itself dismissed, left to wander the annals of his mind until called upon after the fact.
the space cauldron
for record:
faustite to receive new glamour, january 4th, after submission of request on the first. was resultant from sinope leaking his glamour to rowan, from which rowan's corruption sprang. corruption occurred the 28th; only a week has lapsed.
Posted: Sun Feb 11, 2018 12:09 pm
Axinite remained buried in paperwork—something he didn’t seem to mind. Or, at least, never seemed to complain about. There was a glass covered tray of cookies on his desk, a common staple of his office and something that always seemed to make the room feel more homey than some of the other offices. He waited for Faustite to arrive before his desk and offered a smile when the man stopped.
“Faustite,” he greeted, putting his pen down. “I’m glad you’re here. I apologize for the delay in your request, we had a bit of trouble to clean up. I appreciate your patience, but it has certainly been long enough. I’ve reviewed your request and am prepared to fill it out now, but I don’t want to jump into things.”
He offered Faustite a polite smile, sympathetic and encouraging. “I assume you have all of your affairs in order, yes?” he prompted; it was meant to be rhetoric, but Axinite paused and looked up at Faustite expectantly as he waited for a response.
Strickenized
The Space Cauldron
Captain
Offline
Strickenized
Garbage Cat
Online
Posted: Wed Feb 14, 2018 10:10 am
Faustite's gaze drifted to cookies, sat in immaculate, alternating layers under their pretty bell jar of a cover. He didn't understand Axinite the day he met him, and this preposterous addition of normalcy and comfort to the Negaverse's highest pinnacles cemented that notion. He still didn't understand Axinite. He didn't understand the ways in which chaos had broken him, as it invariably breaks every general and above. Maybe Axinite lacked the scope of context. Maybe he scrambled to interject some sense of basic human decency into the Negaverse's soul-churning war machine. Both were Sisyphean feats, he figured.
Or he just liked cookies.
His gaze raised to Axinite all the same. The question sobered him, drained all his passions dry to the bone dust at the bottom of the waves. The question was the type asked to cancer patients, to Huntington's victims, to disastor survivors, to the too weak and the too ill and the too tired to live. The question always nagged him. It felt just askew of a perfectly proper question, one hale and fit for leaving lips. And as he thought of it there, mulled the General-Sovereign's question over in his mind, worked his jaw over its depth of meaning condensed into eleven pithy words, he realized where the folly lie. Where the English language broke down and showed its abject misunderstanding of the world in a single turn of phrase.
It expected order. It expected the messiness of life with all its raw and uncategorized relationships, spidering associations, frivolous wants, fits of passion, fits of sorrow, unreasonable demands, sudden turns for the worse, sunrises and sunsets, beauties, timeless coincidences, lilting melodies and daunting dirges to carefully line up and categorize themselves. Like a life could ever so neatly be folded, bound, and tied shut to shelve into a dusty alcove. And he realized, then, that all the effort put forth to sabotage the life he could've had meant he hadn't done anything at all. There were just as many meaty, bloodied connections left hanging, dripping, waiting for their resolution.
But they wouldn't find that sympathetic knife to sever their pains. "Yes," he answered in a single, empty word. They are now.
But what was to come? "Has anyone else thrown away their identity like this?" The question was hopeful, spoken of a vague hope for solidarity. That he might not be the first held promise for company. That he would be the first held promise for essays.
At least essays filled the empty interstices of Negaverse duties.
the space cauldron
Posted: Tue Feb 27, 2018 6:30 pm
Axinite’s eyes followed him intently.
“To say 'throwing away' your identity implies you are wasting it,” he mused. “You have your reasons, and I have no fit argument to stop you. As it stands, though, I have not been made of anyone who has voluntarily undergone such a tremendous change. But, perhaps no one has been in a position where they felt their safety would be improved.”
He shrugged; he was convinced that Faustite was of sane mind and that this was not a rash decision. Still, he felt the need to ensure that there were no last minute doubts.
“I will caution, though I’m sure you already know. When we are finished with this procedure, there will be no going back. If you have any doubt, any loose ends, I urge you to reconsider or reschedule. But if you are truly ready, and if you have finished managing all of your affairs, I will grant you your request now. It should not be painful.”
It wasn’t like pushing the Chaos into the starseed to make way for new power to grow; it was simply modifying what was already there. It would be a change, perhaps not pleasant but certainly without as much discomfort as any agent should expect from a Chaos procedure.
Strickenized
The Space Cauldron
Captain
Offline
Strickenized
Garbage Cat
Online
Posted: Fri Mar 02, 2018 10:29 am
Maybe no one has been stupid enough to share their identity with the Dark Mirror. Faustite kept silent, gaze trained on either paperwork or furniture or Axinite himself. So no one else has done it. I'm the first.
I'll never worry about ranking up at this rate.
"I don't doubt," he answered in his normal quietude. "There's nothing to reconsider. No better way." The life of Elex Yorke ended when he became youma in body, and the caricature of Elex Yorke met its end shortly thereafter. Misguided trust led to a series of jeopardies that now rested on this last decision before they could relinquish him from their unintended grasp. Sinope held the brunt of power so long as what-ifs and whens and hows still lingered in his mind. Cutting it all away was a simple suggestion for Schörl, who placed no stakes in the final result. To her, it breathed the ease of efficiency. Why toy with a world he couldn't be a part of anymore? Why pretend to be a person — that person — when youma aren't people? "We're just erasing a history."
You take seriously what should be trivial by now. This life. This makeshift identity clung to by a youmafied officer. This amalgamated cesspit of travesties piled on one another to form an homage to teenaged failures. That's what this is. That's what we're paring away.
There are worse fates than this one.
His hands fell from their locked positions and waited limply at his sides. He considered, for a moment, reaching out and anchoring himself with the distinct edge of Axinite's desk, but the thought struck him as traitorous. As clinging to a glory that faced its imminent demise.
"I'm ready," he managed as definitively as he could.
the space cauldron
Posted: Fri Mar 09, 2018 8:31 pm
Axinite tilted his head curiously to one side and then shrugged. “Nothing is erased. It’s the future that’s changing, and even then it is in name only. Metaphorically, at least. You are still you, and your life will still be what you make it. But,” he moved to stand in front of the agent. “I will not keep you from your future any longer. I imagine you are eager to get this finished, and I will comply. Brace yourself.”
It was a gentle instruction, and not one he invested much actual warning in.
It would feel strange, like electricity humming nearby. Axinite had only ever had the sensation described to him, and even then he wasn’t sure if the situation had ever been quite like this. He knew the Chaos would drift into his starseed, that it would envelop and embrace him, and twist him into someone new. At his core, he would be the same.
How the world perceived him would change.
He offered only a moment for Faustite to prepare himself for the hand in his chest, and then Axinite’s fingers slipped inside and gripped his starseed. The pulse of Chaos was slow and steady, and Axinite kept his gaze fixated on the younger man’s face.
Strickenized
The Space Cauldron
Captain
Offline
Strickenized
Garbage Cat
Online
Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2018 5:11 pm
Sometimes looking out from the precipice grants perspective. Faustite withheld comment as Axinite assumed his position at the fore, and apprehension drew its thin lines on his thinner neck while the sovereign offered advice. He cared little for the emptiness of lines overthought — both in himself and in others. But that distaste drew away focus, gratefully, in hopes that he might stay pain through surprise.
Its truth escaped him; he felt no outright pain, but discomfort made home in his starseed. The consternation of it painted his countenance easily. The utter strangeness of it, absent pain, harried him — was it working? Had he gone too far lost to chaos to register its uninvited pains anymore? Did the second-spanned surprise of it succeed in driving off his discomfort? He discounted all questions due the unctuous pulses. Nothing of him changed or shimmered or appeared so markedly different. Nothing screamed that he could not be seen as Elex Yorke. Nothing guaranteed him in the way that this life beyond life promised a sense of raw power.
When the hand then left his chest, leaving him whole and hale and otherwise physically unbothered, Faustite swallowed down the urge to visit a mirror.
A short time passed when he found his tongue, and could speak around the incident. "Thank you, Sir," he managed quietly. His gaze did not find the sovereign's face. Expressions so often dampened his resolve — Schörl could pick her teeth on it.
So it's done. He need only wait for dismissal before he returned to the sames of am.
the space cauldron
Posted: Fri Apr 06, 2018 1:39 pm
Axinite continued to watch him with an attentive eye; he took note of the lack of eye contact but did not take offense to it. Faustite was an interesting creature and Axinite would not claim to understand him. He offered a kind smile, even if the man before him had no intention of observing it.
“Any time, Faustite. If ever you are in need, I hope you will seek me out. I wish only for your continued success. I imagine you are a busy man with much to tend to, so I will not keep you any longer than you desire. You are welcome to stay and converse with me, but if you have business do not let me keep you.”
It was a polite offer—an invitation to stay or leave.
He seemed prepared for either.
Strickenized
The Space Cauldron
Captain
Offline
Strickenized
Garbage Cat
Online
Posted: Sun Apr 08, 2018 2:57 pm
Why are you nice to people? The question lingered on his tongue, but he dared not speak it. Axinite stood at the head of a grand army, with all the power and conditioned rank to mobilize one of its many branches. He had all the human machinery and none of the cloying algorithms that stifled daily life. He had no reason to spare niceties — especially to someone like Faustite. To an abomination, as Leucite intoned so casually.
But it wasn't his place to ask. He, the now otherwise-nameless captain. The partially youmafied without a word for his glamour. The invitation, however meant, stemmed from a General-Sovereign. From the corrupting officer for Heliodor, his now-subordinate. He stood above Schörl in rank and wore none of her contemptible behaviors. Likely he put stock in politeness, in social construct. In paperwork too, judging by the state of his desk. And in feline companionship, given Tiberius's remarks.
Faustite left a brief lull in the conversation where he considered topics close at hand. Conversation was a personal affair among all the agents he met — Aue, Kamacite, Arsenopyrite, even Schörl. To brook it here pressed tension into the air.
He organized himself behind a seat, still expecting to feel some deep epiphany over his newfound anonymity, and pushed the thought from his mind. He shouldn't need to consider it now, not here. There were other tasks at hand. Other questions unasked. Needs unmet and words unspoken and experiences unhad. There will be time. His hands formed a knot of knuckles on the back of the chair, conscious of convention and yet barred from it.
"What do you do when you're not here? When you aren't Axinite."
the space cauldron
Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2018 10:40 pm
Axinite made no attempt to either rush Faustite out or get him to speak; he simply sat patiently and seemed content to give Faustite all the time he needed.
Axinite took note of everything he could; he was an observant man and hadn’t gained his position by accident. He noted Fausite’s expression, his posture, his position behind the chair, the way he held the back of the chair.
The question took him by surprise, but he didn’t show it. He offered a small smile and hummed thoughtfully.
“It depends on the day, I suppose. I work in a social security office, nine to five, Monday through Friday. I suppose that takes up most of my time. I stay busy, though. I’m very set in my routine. Wake up at five, watch the news and work out until seven, shower, breakfast, work. I’ve been establishing rapport with the police force, I’ve been freelancing as a journalist. Depending on what’s going on in the city, I’m either doing that or heading back here. I try to stay until midnight, one o’clock. Unless I have an appointment or get a call. If I can’t sleep, I bake. If I’m having a bad day, I bake.”
He didn’t seem particularly shy about the information, but at some point he had begun to tap on his desk when he spoke. His sleep schedule was not conventional and he seemed to suspect there was some other reason in asking. He was used to Hessonite’s jabs and criticism, used to the surprise at his position given his presumed demeanor.
He had never given any indication that any of it bothered him. His expression had not changed and he wore a soft smile as he observed the man in front of him. He was not ashamed to question, albeit politely, “Why do you ask?”
Strickenized
The Space Cauldron
Captain
Offline
Strickenized
Garbage Cat
Online
Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2018 12:45 pm
What Axinite offered, when asked, was a borderline clinical answer. He gave many points of information to the open question. What do you do was a question both amorphous and easily accepted. It could be answered in full, brushed off with levity, approached with cynicism, redirected. It could be cast out as disrespectful. Seized on as opportunity. Wholly ignored. But Axinite chose to answer forthright.
He offered a nearly itemized list, with secondary and tertiary thoughts behind it. He worked in a social security office, which meant he worked for the government. He liked a routine. Nine-to-five for five days a week. He liked — or tolerated — working with other people. With paperwork. With bureaucracy. Mention of breakfast but no mention of dinner — the morning was for the body's work and the evening for the mind's work. Midnight-to-one with the additional minutes to wind down cut him to four, five hour nights at most during the week. Freelancing likely came after work as a clean segue into Negaverse duties. The night belonged to the darkness of their uniforms. Weekends were a mystery.
So Axinite liked to compartmentalize. To organize his day into portions with their allotted hours and minutes, predictions put in place, outcomes predetermined. His mother would have —
"You're a General-Sovereign," he explained, almost sharp for how quickly he cut his thought short. Fixed as the stars. Military and royalty, neatly hyphenated. His gaze traveled from Axinite's face downward, finally lighting on paperwork stacks and desk paraphernalia. His words reached a soft neutrality as he continued. "You head one of four branches to the Negaverse. You rewrite lives in a moment. You fight a war in your off hours. That puts you in an ivory tower." Just like me.
"I want to know the man in that tower." I want to humanize General-King Axinite, Head of Information. "To put a name to the figure that corrupted someone for me."
the space cauldron
Posted: Wed May 02, 2018 9:32 am
“Ah,” Axinite said, a noise indicating his thoughtful pause more than his attempt at an answer. He leaned back in his seat just slightly. “I confess, I have corrupted many people. It isn’t special to me anymore. Though, I suppose it can be said that all corruptions are special. I try to make them easy. It can be traumatizing, losing so much. At the end of the day, we can only handle so much. We’re only human.”
He seemed a bit more comfortable in his chair, as though drifting into this conversation that wasn’t quiet about work gave him the freedom to relax a bit more. And yet, there was something strained about him, something tense. He hid it well and still projected his friendly demeanor when he added, “Myself included.”
His fingers laced before him atop the desk.
“It would be disrespectful to Metallia and the faith she has placed in me to speak lowly of myself, but I can at least admit that I don’t place any more value in my life than I do anyone else’s. I was a lieutenant, once. I started the same as everyone else. Opportunity gave rise to power, and here I am.”
He seemed thoughtful and tapped one set fingertips across the back of the opposite hand. “I’m not very exciting, not anymore. I used to run a different branch. But, things were very different back then.” There was a strange forlornness to his voice but it didn’t quite seem sad. He was just repeating a fact he seemed to know well. “I think the change was in everyone’s best interest. I wouldn’t be capable of running the Special Operatives branch anymore, but I am quite passionate about our Information branch. Metallia was wise to suggest the change and I am grateful to have the position. But now, I fear I’m rambling. The important thing is to remember to take care of yourself. There is only so much any of us can do. I have limits, the same as everyone else, I’m afraid. But I am an open book for the most part, so if there is anything to know, you need only ask.”
Strickenized
The Space Cauldron
Captain
Offline
Strickenized
Garbage Cat
Online
Posted: Fri May 04, 2018 11:12 pm
'We're only human.'
Faustite's lips tensed into a wry smile. Behind those lips, he gritted his teeth. The thin cords of his underdeveloped neck muscles stood at full attention. The line of his shoulders, unbroken and proud, hummed with a quiet intensity.
We're only human. The lucky many formed the backbone of the Negaverse — the lieutenants, captains, generals, basics, supers, and eternals that each retained their birth-given humanity. The ones allowed rest were not the monsters that roamed the Rift, but the men that roamed the surface. Men were traumatized. Men were taxed. Men were burdened. Men were purged of their memories upon corruption. Men sat at their desks pushing paperwork that kept the Negaverse fueled and fired. Men baked late at night when their few hours of sleep were taxed with the sour wine of old memory. Men walked the day as surely as the night.
But Faustite wasn't human. His fingers weren't human. His toes weren't human. His eyes weren't human. Humans never spewed smoke out of their backs through hackneyed holes.
How bold to test me. How clever. Better to watch me squirm under your thumb until you're satisfied that I'm properly broken, perfectly reshaped, sufficiently unremarkable. Or has sitting behind a desk robbed you of your tact?
Knuckles tightened on the chair back before they relaxed again. They heralded the lead for the rest of the captain's stiff form — first with shoulders, then neck, then lips. "I —" The words caught, withered, died where they began. He could not speak — not in any tongue known to him. Station alone barred any rebuke, however gentle, against the worth of Axinite's life against others. To speak his mind at all raised answer that he was not promoted to captain so he could think. And any thought in reflection of Axinite's humbling, borderline self-deprecating claims would overstep superior-subordinate boundary by even voicing them.
Don't sell yourself short. You're only human.
His head cocked to the side in a light shrug. "Thank you."
He looked at his own fingers, blackened around the second and third knuckles, and he worked them gently over the chair back as he spoke. "I would say more, listen more. But I think those questions are easier asked out of uniform — when we're just people." When we don't have titles branding our tongues.
"I won't interrupt you further," he finished as he finally released the chair back.
the space cauldron
Posted: Thu May 17, 2018 6:10 pm
Axinite’s gaze remained mostly unchanging; there was no hostility or disdain in his voice or demeanor. He seemed aware of the words he had spoken and their effect in Faustite and, after a second, softened.
He did not demand that the Captain stay or make any effort to dismiss him. Instead, he nodded respectfully, as if to indicate the decision was entirely within Faustite’s control.
“My schedule will be open to you whenever you like. But.”
His eyes were as inquisitive as always but his expression implied he had already put together the pieces he needed to make his decision.
“You don’t need to hold your tongue with me. What is discussed in private will remain as such. I confess, I am significantly less intimidating out of my uniform, so if you have something to talk about, we can arrange that. You are no interruption to me, and even if you were you would be a welcome one.”
His eyes strayed to Faustite’s fingers on the chair, and then to his eyes.
He’d had the thought on his mind since Faustite first tensed. Now, unable to keep his thoughts to himself, he spoke with a cool reassurance. “You do know those pieces of you, the youma ones? You know they don’t define you, don’t you? You may look a little different and have a different skill set than those around you, but your heart is the same as it was before them. You must be incredibly strong to bare such changes and still make such great strides in the Negaverse. I’m very proud of you. But despite all of that, you mustn’t push yourself too hard either.”
His gaze and posture remained unwavering but a fresh, sincere smile blossomed on his face. “You’re only human too, you know.”
Strickenized
The Space Cauldron
Captain
Offline
Strickenized
Garbage Cat
Online
Posted: Wed May 23, 2018 11:17 pm
Faustite kept silent through Axinite's words. Quietude was easier, he found, when he formed a better sense of a person. When words were accompanied by a meaning more individualized than their usual definitions. And as Axinite volunteered more of his viewpoints, his tongue burned less for use. His fingers coiled less. Ever quick to anger he was, but the bristles to this conversation began to smooth.
Yet some of those bristles remained in their differing opinions. And while he wanted to bite through his response, to swallow it back, Faustite ventured on the trust extended. Speaking in confidence was a deep and precarious gift, given his other contacts and their self-serving proclivities. He found all the parts of the office before he found Axinite's face; that roiling heat in his gut never faded before he spoke. "I understand where you're coming from." His gaze soon met the desk. "It's a romantic thought. That we're all human despite… these." Faustite splayed his fingers before himself. "That they don't blemish my character. They don't soil my reliability, my trustworthiness, my work ethic. And they don't. They shouldn't," he corrected as his thoughts left to Leucite.
He spoke with quiet certainty as his attention found Axinite once again. "But they do define part of me. My heart changed since I became part youma. I changed — not just visually. To say I haven't erases what it did for me. I'm stronger now than I would've been. More myself. More capable.
"Being half-youma isn't a burden. It isn't a tragedy to forget." He left the statement as it stood; he tasted the modicum of relief on his tongue. Seldom had he ever spoken of his youmafication or what it meant to him — little more than those first nights when he faced his dolor with Chrysocolla's company. To speak of it now — to himself, his audience, or otherwise — was a needful experience, especially in lieu of Axinite's bolstering statements. He felt, for the moment, that he could own this.
Even as Elex Yorke died, he wove the start of new connections out of that tattered end. He pressed a knuckle to the chair in a last response. "I'll see you again soon. In plainclothes."
He needed time to mourn, time to mend, time to keep moving. There would be other days for an appointment like this, he knew. Days where he held fast to a name as sure and bold as he. In the interim, he gave a quiet goodbye to face his next trials.
the space cauldron
fin! i will contact about a followup rp after the plot between with sinope concludes!
