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 Posted: Tue Sep 07, 2021 3:08 pm
Staying home wasn't an option because home had no water. Home would not have water until after 5:00 PM, they said, but Laike knew that it took time to put the sidewalk back together and bury it like they weren't sawing at infrastructure's veins. But it's whatever, he could take a nap in the park.
And he did. Laike never failed to nap at the park. On the bench sometimes, on the grass sometimes — didn't matter where, as long as no one tripped on him.
This time, he was on the grass. This time, someone tripped over him and he woke with a start, but they hadn't stopped long enough to apologize. She finished her stumble and kept running, screaming, as she moved away. Away was, he realized as he sat up and rubbed his shoulder, back toward the street. A busy street, too, and definitely not where Laike wanted to run if he was running to a destination. No, that was how someone got flattened by a careless driver who wouldn't stop to call an ambulance. That meant she was running from a destination.
Or a person, he guessed. A person, place, or thing. Feeling too lazy to get to his feet, Laike turned his head to see where she'd come from.
Between two thin, scabby birch trees, he spied more people running — in no particular direction. So they weren't trying to get anywhere in particular, and they were all running from the same noun. Presumably. Laike sat up on his elbows, pouted a little at the radiant pain coursing warm down his arm.
Then he glimpsed a something. If he had to describe it, he'd call it a mouth on legs. No discernible eyes, and its round body seemed like it was only there to support the giant mouth. Thing was jagged, teeth nothing but incisors, and spindly, withered legs that sped frantically beneath it. It didn't seem too smart, either, what with how it careened from one potential victim to the negs, like it got tired of chasing them when they failed to fall on the floor and stop moving. Turn and chase, turn and chase, turn and chase. Laike pulled his phone out.
He watched it in the half-second delay that was the video function on his phone. He watched the display brighten and dim with the day transitioning from sunny to cloudy back to sunny. "He, look," he spoke at the recording. "I found another one of those things. Think that radio guy will want to know about it? Maybe he'll put it on the air."
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Posted: Sun Sep 19, 2021 12:46 pm
Jet hadn’t been the one to call the youma. It must have been one of the random ones that got loose from the Rift, or maybe it was a bad joke that General Ashanite decided to play on innocent civilians. He’d been in the park with his notebook, trying to jot down ideas for his latest composition while Lovely was at work. The sound of people screaming and running of course caught his attention, and after slipping behind some bushes (and making sure no mirror was already shoved behind them), he powered up.
“Alright, that’s enough,” he called to the youma as it tried to chase after the closest civilian. From subspace, Jet pulled out a small orb of energy and held it out like he would a treat to an animal and waited for the dumb creature to turn its attention away from the screaming civilians.
Of course, he wasn’t so blind that he didn’t notice the young man standing around and filming the whole thing. Was this the newest craze? Filming everything that happened? He wouldn’t know. He’d been too busy working all the time to be in touch with trends, at least until recently. But since Cymophane was into doing social media things, he could only assume that this guy was doing the same thing.
“You’re not scared of it?” he asked, and tossed the orb of energy to the youma, before digging into his subspace for another orb. “You know these are real, don’t you? Or have you seen them before? If you have, you should know you’re just going to be a target for them,” he pointed out, wondering if this guy was fearless or just dumb.
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Posted: Wed Sep 22, 2021 3:54 am
He only rose when the thing started going after him. Its path detoured strongly, however, when some guy in an astonishingly fine uniform put down some kind of a treat or a ball for it. Something purple that glowed? Laike kept his camera trained on the creature as it scrambled after the thing. Laike wondered if he went running around looking for these —
Oh no. He was talking to Laike.
He lowered his phone, pressed stop, and wished that worked for people, too. If he could just stop people from talking to him or acknowledging he exists…
Swallowing, Laike nodded. His posture closed up and he trained his attention on the creature rather than the person talking to him. He hadn't gotten a great look, but Laike didn't recognize him from anything. He was reasonably sure, though, that the guy was in cosplay.
"I've been attacked by one before." Instead of backing up the claim with a show of scars, Laike tucked his phone back in his pocket and crossed his arms. "I think people might be worse? At least, these, they — well — they all try to kill me, so I know what to expect." People, he never had a clue. Never knew if he was going to walk into the grocery store and find that the same clerk who smiled at him the last three times was suddenly foul and looking to lash out on someone. But the #weirddog starlings of Twitter? They were dependably consistent.
"Am I in trouble?" It felt like a juvenile thing to ask, but he wasn't sure why else someone would question him abrasively. This dude gave off big cop energy.
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Posted: Tue Sep 28, 2021 1:45 pm
“Why would you be in trouble?” Jet asked in confusion, his brows furrowed just slightly. He wasn’t looking at the young man, but instead keeping an eye on the youma so it didn’t do something stupid-- more stupid than it was already.
“I’m sorry you were attacked by one. They aren’t that smart. Not most of them. They don’t understand the difference between what is food and what they shouldn’t go after. Are you okay? You don’t look too maimed, so I’m guessing it was a while ago,” Jet observed, a little surprised that he put his phone away, but he did snort softly-- it wasn’t quite amusement, but it was more like agreement to the young man’s thoughts.
“People are absolutely worse, you’re right,” he nodded, and then once he tossed another energy orb to the youma he turned back to give the young man another look over. He didn’t look very impressive, but he wasn’t running away from the youma, which was something.
“Since you’re familiar with youma, I’m assuming you’ve heard of all the magical people running around the city too?”
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Posted: Fri Oct 08, 2021 5:19 pm
Laike cocked his head at the willow branch of a man, initially confused. Then he flattened his hand out, palm down and perpendicular to the earth, and flapped the total angle that covered Jet's regalia. Because that was definitely regalia, if Laike had anything to say about it. Looked downright regal, princely level stuff. "You look like an officer."
Well, not quite. "Or like… you're in whatever they call the ceremonial stuff. Or maybe? Band uniform?" Hadn't thought of that one until now. "But," moved to hold his own chin, "cops or whatever don't talk to anyone unless they're in trouble. Or they're trying to menace them? That's why I asked." It was all nerves now, this conversation. Laike felt like he was getting interrogated; Mr. Cop was real intense about it.
But at least he wasn't tasing Laike for existing in his space. Yet,
And he kept talking about the monsters, which were a much better topic of conversation than am I in trouble. He'd rather watch the weird little mouth on legs go chasing after those brilliant purple balls than look this dude in the eyes, anyway. Hand moved from his chin to creep up the back of his neck before he finally shoved it into his pocket.
"Is that what they're called?" The question was asked as a buffer to give him time to think. "Uh, yeah, I guess. The first one looked like a high schooler whose teachers set him on fire? I saw some magical feihua going on, like some guy covered in leaves said something about a magical war. It sounded like a video game plot." Though, the more he watched this mouth-on-legs wobble around, the more he wondered if this was some feverdream he drummed up while he was dying in a street somewhere, or if this was some crazy reality that he'd missed out on for however many years.
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Posted: Tue Oct 12, 2021 8:05 pm
Jet opened his mouth, closed it, and then looked down at himself and his uniform. “A band uniform?” he repeated, and then he snorted softly in amusement, followed by a more defined laugh, amused by the thought of a supposed big bad Negaverse General, as the White Moon would like to make of all of them, was actually just a kid in a band.
“Am I menacing you?” Jet asked, but he was more amused and couldn’t keep a serious face for long. He waited until the bumbling youma made its way back towards them, before he pulled out another small orb of energy to toss in its direction.
And then cringed at the very clear cut description of Faustite. “I know that one,” he said with a small sigh, but he was still in good spirits from thinking about the Negaverse in a band. “General Faustite is his name. My name is General Jet. I wish I could say the magical war you heard about was just a video game plot. But you’ve already seen the youma around. You’ve seen soldiers in this war, even if we just look like we’re wearing band uniforms. Unless they’re on fire,” he added, another cringe.
Lucky for this kid, he wasn’t General Benitoite, and wasn’t going to kill him in the street, or leave him for the youma to attack.
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Posted: Wed Oct 27, 2021 9:28 pm
"No offense, but not really." Maybe at first a little, or maybe that was just Laike's nerves catching up with him. Nothing Jet said was directly threatening. Really, Laike didn't know what to make of him. Usually people were somewhere between 'strange' and 'a*****e' and he was just… An outlier, Laike supposed. Not that he was against outliers.
But the whole conversation was strange. No, more like surreal. Like something he'd expect to encounter in the Hunter's Dream. Fated stuck that smacked of 'your choices don't matter and you're ******** anyway', even though his choices mattered in what kind of bad ending he'd get out of this.
But this wasn't one of those overblown fateful encounters, either. He wasn't sure what this was.
But he knew about the fiery kid. Faustite, apparently. Sounded like everyone was named after a gem. Maybe those were codenames?
"I dunno," Laike shifted his weight, folded his arms and looked at Jet's feet. "He looked like he was wearing a band uniform, too, just that it was on fire." Or part of it was, anyway.
Which reminded him — he'd much rather work on his Pyromancer build in the Dark Souls remaster than have a conversation. But there was one last thing to clear before he could make up an excuse to slip away: "Faustite did something to me that made me pass out. Are you going to do the same thing?"
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Posted: Sun Dec 12, 2021 10:55 am
Not really. Jet snorted softly in amusement. He was still trying to determine what it was about this young man that he liked. Maybe it was his apparent nonchalance to the whole magic thing, although he felt bad that he’d been pulled into it in unfavorable circumstances.
“He probably took your energy,” Jet said, although obviously there were no lasting injuries caused by it. He turned to the youma as it made its way back, and shook his head at it. “Go back to the Rift. You’ve done enough today.” He kept an eye on it to make sure it wasn’t going to do something stupid, but glanced back at the civilian.
“How would you like to be able to tell them what to do, too?” he asked, nodding to the youma. “You wouldn’t have to worry about them coming after you or anyone you wanted to protect. They just want energy,” he explained, which was a bit simpler of an explanation than the reality of it, but it was good enough for now.
“You don’t have to decide right away, but you’ll have more protection if you do,” he explained. “We’re part of the Negaverse, which protects the Earth from the magical terrorists that have been destroying the city. They want to take over and claim the Earth for themselves, when they could easily go back to the worlds they come from. Sounds pretty crazy, doesn’t it?” he said with a laugh, and then held out his hand to summon his weapon, and took it to stab one of the bladed ends into the ground.
“I’m not going to hurt you. We’re here to protect the civilians of Destiny City. We just need energy to help our cause sometimes. If we do take some, it’ll be restored once you have a good night's sleep. Small price to pay to save the Earth, huh? I guess it is kind of like a video game plot…”
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Posted: Thu Dec 16, 2021 11:45 am
The Rift? Laike wondered if he was talking about some rift between worlds — that sounded pretty Final Fantasy, but the whole monsters thing was very Final Fantasy. Or Pokemon. Both, really. Plus Bloodborne, but that was more like… People are the real monsters. Which was kinda dark.
Hands in his pockets, Laike stared quizzically at the thing as it toddled off and just… Disappeared. Walked right out of existence. Laike envied it just then — he'd love to walk out of existence whenever some stranger came and talked to him, or when his landlord gave him 24 hours notice for entry and he had to clean up his apartment, or when his mom tried to disappointed!parent him into doing something with his life — but Laike wasn't that lucky. He probably needed to be a monster to do that, and being a monster probably sucked.
"Are they like dogs? Uh… Weird dogs?" He'd seen that Twitter hashtag make the rounds. "Or do you have to pay them in energy so they'll do things for you? Like, bribery."
He took a moment to think about it as he pushed around a few grass blades with his foot. It'd be nice to keep them out of his business when they were running amok like today, but if they were like dogs, then that meant responsibility. And Laike was sure that he was allergic to responsibility, just — full blown hives all over his body, anaphylactic shock whenever someone told him to get a real job, or anything really. And as Jet explained a little more, Laike realized that it definitely spelled responsibility. It sounded like a video game premise, but instead of being engrossed in a cool storyline, he'd have to do all the work himself. And Laike wasn't a fan of work.
But it seemed rude to tell Jet no. And what if he got mad? Or got pushy with him? What a hassle. He was already tired.
"It sounds like Dead Space, kinda," he said at last, though he didn't disagree about sounding crazy — especially for real life. "Or Alien: Isolation." He wondered what the magical terrorists looked like. Were they xenomorphs? Did they have a million arms? Did Jet have to curb stomp them off to keep them from getting up again? Wow, Laike would need all the energy he could get, too, if it was that much work.
"So, my choices are: I could donate energy, or join up and fight magical terrorists and get energy from people?"
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Posted: Fri Dec 17, 2021 7:44 pm
"It wouldn't just be joining up and fighting magical terrorists. No offense, but you don't look like you're much of a fighter," Jet pointed out. "There's other things we do to keep the city safe. We can figure out what would suit you the most. We can train you how to fight. That's preferable, actually. I don't believe in filling space with warm bodies. I think you seem level headed enough to handle the extra power."
Jet didn't blame him for seeming skeptical. He had no idea what he was referring to-- movies? Games maybe? -- but it wasn't as though Jet was desperate for new recruits. He'd been intrigued by how calm this young man had seemed with a youma so close. And there had been enough agents with, uh, colorful personalities to last him a lifetime.
"You can take time to think about it if you want," he said. He'd offered Cymophane the same. It took him a few weeks, but it wasn't as though Jet was in any rush. Although with the dangers in the city, he couldn't imagine wandering around without some extra power to protect themselves.
"And… I guess they're kind of like weird dogs. They take care of themselves, though. Some are stubborn and you have to bribe them." Or carry them out of burning buildings, but that was another conversation entirely.
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Posted: Sat Dec 18, 2021 9:45 am
Laike loosed an audible sigh of relief when Jet implied he wouldn't be punching out magical terrorists. That was better; he didn't want to break his knuckles on someone's face and then have to reschedule his Twitch streams. But then he started talking about training Laike to fight, and the boy instantly defaulted back into bad idea mode.
And he could think about it. Great, that meant put it off and pretend it never happened, go back to video games, and probably never encounter this dude again. Which was honestly preferable because it sounded like joining them was extra work.
"Is there like, pay and benefits?" Because his current job was also work, and it wasn't that interesting, and he didn't get any benefits (not that it really mattered, but his family had a habit of their appendices exploding around his age, so it kind of mattered), and the pay was actual garbage. If joining the Negaverse meant he worked as many hours for like, twice the pay? That meant new games twice as fast. Sort of.
"But, yeah, time to think about it would be nice."
Weird dogs that they had to bribe sometimes — Laike would have to remember that for the next time one showed up.
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Posted: Wed Dec 22, 2021 6:50 pm
"We've got health benefits, yeah," Jet said, not thinking too much of the other's apparent hesitation. If Jet wanted to fill the Negaverse with warm bodies, he would have done that easily by now. This was more than that, and Jet would appreciate someone not, well, insane among their ranks. Too many had questionable morals, as far as the Negaverse was concerned.
"There's also housing if you can't afford a place on your own. And if you need help with finances, we've got that too." Jet wasn't going to tell him that they had a hospital, just in case this didn't work out. Nor was he going to tell him that the help with finances was likely going to come from him. And by him, he meant Lovely's trust fund.
"I usually hang out around this park on Saturday nights for a few hours, if you do decide you'd like the chance to protect yourself and others. Don't wait too long. It's not safe wandering the city," Jet warned. He wouldn't make him stay around if he didn't want to. He had other things to do, like making sure that youma actually made its way back to the Rift, and checking if any Senshi decided to make their way over to investigate. Nothing so far, but they could appear like cockroaches. "Until then," Jet said with a small nod.
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Posted: Thu Dec 30, 2021 2:35 pm
Benefits were good, that was something in favor of this sketchy magical stuff. And 'help with finances' wasn't exactly 'hourly pay', but Laike doubted they were government subsidized. Wouldn't they have been a part of the American military at that point? Maybe it was more like commission work, or maybe they'd help support him until he could become a more accomplished streamer. That'd be better than his current job.
And it sounded like he'd be talking to fewer people, too. Definitely worth considering.
But if he decided against it, he'd never be able to visit this park again. Even if Jet said he was usually here on Saturday nights, there was a possibility of him showing up at this park at some other point, and then he might ask Laike if he was going to join, and he would have to say yes because saying no invoked the possibility of trouble, and even if Jet wasn't going to hold that against him, just risking it was too much for the shy boy.
Laike offered a light shrug at Jet's comment. Yeah, the city wasn't that safe, but Laike wasn't that worried as long as he was running into monsters instead of people. "Thanks," he added, just to be sure. "See you next Saturday."
As Jet departed, Laike likewise left, and buried his attention in his phone as he hastily texted his sister that she wouldn't believe what just happened to him. Even if it sparked a long conversation, he couldn't think of anyone better for a decision like this.
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