Spring encroached on the brevity of night — on his cover, his cloak, his freedom. Where the skies woke earlier and stayed vigilant later, Faustite found less time to run his patrols where whispers of smoke would fiind no notice by the city's denizens. Such changes heralded more urgency and more alertness to the changing of the seasons — and to the impending heat wave that was summer.
For now, the youmafied captain still claimed a wedge of night. He still crossed the low, crown-like parapets above a row of mom and pop stores, stores he remembered visiting as a human teen, and derelict places of business on the verge of foreclosure. He passed the heights of prosperity and the deepest drudges of misfortune and all the merchantile variants in between. The scent of copper and salt touched the street level and curled into the more industrious side of the street, where newspaper printers worked late in the night and poured their oils and inks into the sky. All this he passed, studious if not fastidious in his dismissals. The streets were bare for all the industry that remained indoors. The smattering of bars were emtpy. The city was wise to his wiles, needs, his conditions. It would not sate him today.
Another corner turned, and the jagged teeth of Destiny City petered to single-story — it edged almost seamlessly from an industrial powerhouse to cafés and restaurants to the first well-kept houses that closed their wooden arms about their yards. Children played in the daylight hour, but night found these grassed yards empty and still.
The weeks of missed energy gathering demanded satiation, yet the city spared none of its fruits. Paused, Faustite looked out from a shingle-laden sloped roof, toward the furthest reaches of the lamp-perched stars. Nothing moved. For once, the city observed its own sleep schedule. But Schörl insisted he fulfill all those weeks spent absent, and if the strange veneer of his new perspective didn't hold, he would panic over it. Fret for his own life. Second-guess an impending full youmafication for his inability to find a single soul to drain. Now he found it strange, if ambiently amusing. The irony teased a wry smile.
I'll call it a walk, he decided, and strode onward with his awareness turned toward the stars.
stari_maga
if this doesn't work, lmk! i've been dealing with a bunch of stuff that's muse-killing for faustite specifically, so sorry about the wait!
Posted: Sat Apr 07, 2018 12:12 pm
Something was immediately off. Fleur was at home when she decided to go out, and only a few houses down when she powered up. Of course, there was always the chance that there would be a huge, pulsing mess of auras in some warehouse or another, she supposed, but making sure that nothing came into her neighborhood was usually simple. This place actually followed safety guidelines, and was hopefully boring by nefarious standards. People were sleeping behind locked doors by 10 PM. Cybele had never found anything besides a few less intelligent youma snuffling around.
If she felt like hunting, she'd go downtown to where the easier pickings for the Negaverse were, or to the parks where people tended to pick fights. She was feeling restless tonight and might have headed to one of those places, only she felt an aura as soon as she powered up. A captain's aura.
She blinked. Then, she took off running.
She smelled smoke and tensed. She was not scared of smoke, but she did not like what it often brought. She did not like death. She did not like being trapped in smoke filled rooms. She was becoming less and less of a fan of fire. It had seemed that people had figured out in recent years that arson didn't help anything, though, so the scent of smoke on this quiet night was even more unnerving.
It didn't take her long after that to find him. She took one look at him, with the pipes and the smoke and the empty eyes. "Oh," she said, almost relieved. "You're one of them." It wasn't an insult, just coldly stating the facts. This was still odd, but not the disaster scene she'd been half expecting, and as he was one of those half youma monsters, she didn't have to wonder about what the right thing to do to him was. She dropped into a fighting stance.
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Posted: Mon Apr 09, 2018 2:12 pm
The rush of starlight to meet him was welcome-unwelcome in his own way. A muddied delight, one that simmered in his heart with a font of cold. She looked familiar in that unfamiliar way, in that seen-it-all way, and he felt the undue certainty. Hair nearly white beneath moonlight, an unassuming dress, heels ever impractical for sprinting down sidewalks and courting evil. She looked like any senshi.
But she refused to behave like any senshi. Gone were the invitations to chat, the impotent dissuasions, the questions about his state of being. While she did not attack like the eternal or the knight, she showed her every intention for it. Feet apart, arms up. Faustite reacted with a scoff.
He dropped down to meet her level in a ravel of smoke. Slow, purposeful strides carried him out past the house's shadow, where moonlight gleamed on his pipes and her antlered tiara. "I so love when people tell me where I do and don't belong. What I am and what I'm not." His arms drew over his chest, readied, disguised in a cross. She intimated her choice to fight already; Faustite would not deny her. Gone was his patience for pleading his innocence, for bending to the Negaverse while breaking to the enemy. The choice was made, the tithe accepted.
Faustite hoped she hauled out to hit him. Raised a fist in all her brutal, prettied glory and aimed it straight for him. He closed the distance to encourage it — each step taken retaining the same controlled gait — and spread arms only when he neared her. Smoke shot out at once.
stari_maga
Dispersion ;; Range: 3 foot radius with Faustite at the epicenter. Duration: 30 seconds Use Count: 3x Miss Chance: Circumventing magic, stepping out of range. Effect: Faustite draws his hands together, and a sound like an opening lighter may be heard. Smoke pours from Faustite in a deafening blast. Those caught in the initial blast endure a ringing in the ears and mild disorientation. Breathing smoke causes burning lungs, stinging eyes, and frequent coughing. Ringing ears and coughing symptoms linger after leaving the smoke for 5 seconds. Any lasting damage is defending player's choice.
Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2018 10:58 am
She watched him crawl out of the shadows in full hunter mode, looking for hints of what could be under that nearly unassuming figure. Unassuming meant little when it came to the Negaverse, and those pipes were hard to miss. They set off warning bells in the back of Cybele's mind in more ways than one. They just didn't seem quite right somehow, but of course, the bigger threat here was fire. That wasn't great, but at least nothing nearby seemed to be begging to burst into flames. She could handle this.
Then, he opened his mouth. She gave a sharp sigh and shook her head as a tiny bit of pity tried to emerge. He was articulate, intelligent. She shoved it back down. Years ago she might have hesitated, but at this point the knowledge that there were monsters that talked like men was very, very old news. "That's not always something we get to decide," she replied steadily as he got closer. I'm a murderer. You're an abomination. Sorry about that.
She didn't move for a few seconds as he did the work of approaching. Then, when there were only a few feet left between them, she brought her fists up higher and sprinted towards him.
Everything exploded. Maybe that wasn't the right word. There was no fire. There was just smoke. Only smoke. Nothing in Cybele's entire world except smoke. She couldn't see. She couldn't hear. How was it that loud? It was in her eyes, and down her throat as soon as she reflexively gasped.
How could she forget? How could she forget that smoke was always the worst part?
Still, she had her momentum and she still threw that punch.
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Posted: Sun Apr 29, 2018 9:20 pm
Where smoke billowed, Faustite reached outward. His magic only worked as a tactical shock once — ever after, his opponent would know what to expect. How to react. How to avoid it. And, eventually, how to use it against him. He needed that starseed before she formed such awareness, before his tactics diminished to trite parlor tricks.
But as he reached, as he searched through the mutually blinding smoke, he found only the fist that shot at him. It struck squarely in his chest, sending him stumbling backward with a gasping breath. A second passed in the interim — a second long enough to give her retreat, to collect her thoughts. And as with senshi magic, his smoke was a matter of waiting it out. Of guiding him away from its usefulness. Acting faster was of imperative. Pressing the offensive. Keeping her guessing.
He straightened against the pain and shot forward, casting about in a last search for her. All the unfamiliarity of his uniform occurred to him for if he did grasp a shred of cloth in darkness. He could not grasp the tail of a ribbon and know, in exact inches, how much closer he should get to reach through that obfuscated cavity.
It didn't matter. Slipping chance drove him. With his hand drenched in Negaverse darkness, he made a grab for that vulnerable starseed.
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Posted: Fri May 04, 2018 8:38 pm
Her fist connected, which was always a nice feeling, but without much use of her eyes, that satisfaction was paired with relief as she felt something under her knuckles that was too solid to be anything but ribs and for a split second she knew right where she had him.
Then, he stumbled away and she was right back to square one. Well, he had to be just out of reach. If she could just advance and keep him on the defensive, she could finish this, but as she took that step forward, squinting around and trying to feel things out with her still closed fists, the smoke was really starting to get to her. She couldn't hold her breath with all this activity, but her inhale was barely a sputter. Then, the coughing came, wracking her lungs as hot tears rolled down her cheeks.
With that, she had lost her chance for pressing the advantage. All she could make out was a slight shift and then there was a hand on her shoulder, its fingers only a few inches off from where it could get at her starseed. Panicking, Cybele threw her fist up in a windshield wiper block because he needed to be off of her, and if she got her way it would hurt.
Then, she took a few steps backwards. Until she could breathe and see, she would just slowly become an easier target.
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Posted: Mon May 07, 2018 10:06 pm
Faustite grunted as the senshi's block struck him in the hand. Fire spidered through the site, gripping the muscle. Buried in it were the thousand pinpricks of awareness that, yes, he nearly broke his hand. Already it felt like it was swelling.
Fabric faded and heel clops told him that she wizened up and distanced herself. Seconds remained on his smoke; Faustite used those moments to double over momentarily and press his hand to bruised chest. Each breath hurt — he sucked in pain with every breath of smoke. He drew in some ghost of what others felt by walking through his mere presence. Faustite's brows furrowed into a point as he swallowed hard against it.
He stepped backwards, wary, hand still on his chest. The senshi loomed into view again. She knew, now, never to allow close contact. Never to let him stray in arm's reach of her not only for his tenacity for starseeds, but also for his crippling magics. And while he could dog her with teleportations, doing so proved much too costly for a captain's reserves.
Faustite didn't try to gesture with his injured free hand. "You can't win, senshi. Your skirmishes are a pitiful pittance. You do nothing for energy already stolen. For starseeds already taken. For lives already lost.
"Go home," he urged quietly, "unless you want to lose yourself."
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Posted: Wed May 09, 2018 1:17 pm
Cybele's wrist took the impact, too, and the pain set in after the second of relief passed. She gritted her teeth to keep from gasping more in the remnants of smoke. Desperate moves were almost always a double edged sword, but at least she was alive.
Her lungs were on fire. Even as she left the worst of the smoke, she still had a few coughs left. With effort, she managed a proper breath, but even that burned. The world was no longer all gray but it was still almost impossible to see anything with so much water coming out of her eyes. She could hear decently, even with a strange ringing in her ears from the explosion. When she heard him talking at her she took the opportunity to focus on taking a few shallow breaths.
Still, she was a bit of a captive audience. She heard him. Her emotions tried to surface again, as he was putting the things that kept her up at night into words. Something bubbled under her tongue, the kind words that she'd been given by her allies over the years, something about hope and that saving who you could was enough. Unfortunately for him, she did not have the patience or the breath for philosophy at the moment. She let the anger stay and shoved the rest aside. How dare he.
"Oh, shut up already," was what she sputtered at him. She wiped her eyes with the back of her fist and called out, "Hunter's Deadly Grace!"
She shot off her magic practically before it had finished forming and smiled as it helped her cut through the lingering symptoms of the smoke. The pain didn't feel so important. The half-youma before her shifted from a blur to a very clear target. She advanced, throwing a fist towards that unnatural face.
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Super Sailor Scout Attack: Hunter's Deadly Grace Cybele summons a bigger bow with three arrows. The speed boost they provide is slightly more noticeable than Hunter's Grace. She shoots the bow straight up, and the arrows automatically target her and up to two nearby Order aligned beings (including cats). However, if there don't happen to be enough Order aligned beings around, the remaining arrows will randomly fall, and can be easily or even accidentally intercepted by anyone else around, giving them the benefits. The arrows can target Order aligned beings within five feet of where they are fired from, but arrows without targets tend to fall closer to that spot. The effect lasts for 30 seconds. She can use the bow to threaten people, under the same conditions as before. She can use this attack twice per battle.
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Posted: Tue May 15, 2018 6:39 pm
Faustite watched the bow shimmer into her hands, formed of moonlight and marvel, and discharge into the air. He watched that selfsame arrow descend over the top of her. He watched it peter into nothing. But she acted different now — revitalized — and the name alone gave him little indication of its effects.
Hunter's Deadly Grace. Increased combat prowess? Better balance and faster movement? Faustite found no obvious signs in those scanty moments, but she charged him nigh immediately. He scraped together the view from the rooftop in a breath — the sallow, grounded stars; the clumps of trees cast into black, the way the moon spread its silvery fingers over too-narrow roofs —
The strike to his face, too soon for his estimation, sent Faustite stumbling backward. The woven memory of the rooftop fell away in a heap of scattered thoughts, dispersed by pain and mounting pressure. Reactively he spewed out a second sea of smoke.
What is it. The question was demanded through a sneer of pain. Count the seconds. Maybe five.
Faustite was reticent to stick around for this. Already his bones groaned and his mind tired with magic used and blows taken. His nose bled, certainly, and his wrist sung with pain. Remaining was less an attempt at victory and more a war of attrition to learn all he could of Hunter's Deadly Grace.
I need a youma, he determined bitterly.
stari_maga
i rewrote this tag twice so apologies if it seems disjointed
for ease:
Range: Any single target within his 3' radius. Duration: Remaining time of Dispersion attack Use Count: 3x Miss Chance: All factors affecting Dispersion. Effect: Faustite draws all the smoke of his present Dispersion attack into the lungs of the affected victim. The smoke passes through nose and mouth and leaves behind temporary burns in its wake. When in the victim's lungs, the smoke condenses into a toxic fluid that triggers various symptoms. Liquid inside the lungs causes coughing and gasping, while heat sears the tissue. The carbonaceous water evaporates at the end of the attack. Any lasting damage is defending player's choice.
Posted: Sat May 19, 2018 7:59 am
She could hear him breathing. She could hear the way his breath faltered and cut out for a moment when her hit connected. She could hear the way it hissed to life again. He was still alive.
She could see. She could see the way the smoke shot out of his back, even as she kept moving forward, ready to finish the job. It was in the air around her. Even with the speed from her magic, she could not dodge.
This time, it was no cloud that she could barrel through. Within a moment the smoke was pouring down her throat. Then, she could smell. She could taste. She could feel, and there. There was the fire. With her magic active, she never once took her eyes off of him, but it didn't do much to take away from the shock of the pain. She was burning from the inside out, and she sputtered and gurgled because she did not have the air to scream.
It was very lucky that her freeze instinct was slightly outweighed by her magically enhanced focus on killing her prey. She forced one foot forwards and then the other. Her magic couldn't do much about the lack of oxygen, and with her continued coughing her movements weren't as steady as they should have been, but she narrowed her bloodshot eyes and swung another fist.
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Posted: Thu May 24, 2018 1:10 pm
Ten now, he was sure of it. Ten seconds passed and she pressed on nonetheless. She pressed on through a smoke thick and oppressive — a smoke that drowned its fair number of victims. Smoke that brought others to their knees in less time than this. Weaker constitutions dropped to the floor and sucked in greedy breaths like gasping gluttons.
Eleven. She marched on unfazed. She struckout and he raised an arm to deflect, yet she caught his cheek before he could catch the blow. Another bloom of pain followed. Teeth grazed across teeth at an obtuse angle; he tasted blood. Stumbling backward drove him to the edge of his own cloud.
Twelve. Faustite gestured bleakly ahead; he needn't see her to direct the smoke. That smog constricted, bent, and wormed toward her to burrow into her lungs. No one outran it yet, he knew.
Thirteen. Faustite snorted hard to shunt the ink-blood from his nose. Black spattered across concrete, across boots. Some may have caught on her fuku as a petty parting gift. Ribs ached and he now forced breath through his mouth.
Fourteen. It can't be much longer.
Fifteen.
stari_maga
last magic attack! he is so done with this fight
Occlusion ;; Range: Any single target within his 3' radius. Duration: Remaining time of Dispersion attack Use Count: 3x Miss Chance: All factors affecting Dispersion. Effect: Faustite draws all the smoke of his present Dispersion attack into the lungs of the affected victim. The smoke passes through nose and mouth and leaves behind temporary burns in its wake. When in the victim's lungs, the smoke condenses into a toxic fluid that triggers various symptoms. Liquid inside the lungs causes coughing and gasping, while heat sears the tissue. The carbonaceous water evaporates at the end of the attack. Any lasting damage is defending player's choice.
Posted: Sat May 26, 2018 7:09 pm
She reached warm skin and solid bone. She felt something shift in his face. It still wasn't enough. Another few footsteps. He could still walk, and while his breath was not coming quite as smoothly now, it was still better than hers as she stood here with a chest full of fire and a body full of muscles screaming against that pain.
Another. Another? Another plume of smoke came. Cybele's mouth was still open as her body worked to cough out what was already in her lungs, but these things worked both ways. There was no way around it. She saw gray for a moment and then tasted the bitter smoke again. A few drops of monster blood splattered against her shoes. Every fiber of her mind screamed to take down the weakened beast, but that only did so much to cancel out the abuse her body was taking. This final attack was the breaking point.
Her knees buckled as her coughing fit renewed. She hit the concrete hard and barely caught herself on one hand before she could faceplant. It took all of her oxygen deprived strength just to hold that position and to force the breath she could. Her lungs burned. Pain was not something you ever really got used to, and this visceral internal kind that her body didn't understand was so much worse.
She still had a few seconds left on her magic, but when she tried to spring forwards, she only managed half a stumbling step and landed back on her hands. Instead, for those last few seconds, all she could do was hear those ragged breaths and smell the too-copper, too-acrid tang of his blood and feel something bubbling inside her own lungs.
Then, even that clarity was gone.
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Posted: Sun May 27, 2018 4:19 pm
Twenty-five. She still approached. He spat blood into his palm, the well of fire still sharp and brilliant in his chest. He straightened and the ground yawed, derisive as a bull pitching its rider. Faustite stumbled with his dwindling energy.
Twenty-seven. She pressed forward with her unconscionable energy, with her drive encouraging her ever onward. Her target faltered under his own hurts. Cheek swollen, nose and mouth still spilling ink, his chest hurting with every heave. The last of his magic clenched in her gut with no further smoke to renew his efforts. Still, she fought against retching. Still, she swallowed back the filmy froth with which he cursed her. Still she fought.
Twenty-eight. His head throbbed and the world flickered in his dark eyes.
Twenty-nine. Finally she began to heel. She crouched under the weight of his magic.
Thirty. She heaved once, twice. She lingered with his magic grinding her down into the macadam. And with a hand pressed steady against the corner of a house, Faustite knew the final recourse. Her starseed had to go.
White, purple, green. Antlered headgear. Feet faltered as they found their path. Destiny City lurched and rolled its tongue beneath him. Hunter's Deadly Grace. Thirty seconds estimation. Maybe twenty-five. Ink pooled in thick droplets to mark his path as it spilled freely from his face. one drop, then two. He snorted and a bluster spattered the ground. It sharpens her somehow. Solution…
Keening out from the distance, beyond the city's teeth, was the flare of another aura. This one pure enough to sear the eyes, screaming voiceless in the mind. An eternal, perhaps. But worse, cleaner. Its presence grew and grew and grew, demanding attention. Demanding caution. Capitulation.
Solution… Faustite needed the starseed. But the world petered in and out of his spent perception, spreading its focus into lurid colors and incomprehensible shapes. She was a senshi, then a streak of white against a blackened canvas. One foot fore the other. Inches crossed. Bushes watched with benign indifference from their perfect, manicured lawns as he reached for her. But that signature bloomed too brightly —
Can't risk it. Solution: kite her. Resignation pressed his eyes closed. In his mind, he erected the great, jagged spires that marked Negaspace's great Citadel until only smoke remained in his wake.
stari_maga
i hope this works; can edit if need be. thank you for the rp!
