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 Posted: Sat Sep 25, 2021 5:36 am
He thought it strange to visit a General-Sovereign where he lived, and stranger to visit for reasons not directly work-related. Faustite skipped the bus this time, choosing to teleport a half-mile away to the nearest known location (in this case, a gas station) and walk the remaining distance. It was an easy plan, in theory.
In practice, Faustite forgot what it was like to be human. More specifically, he forgot the limitations of being human, so when he teleported to the roof of the gas station and became Eion, he tried to run for a few leveled jumps to the opposite building but couldn't amass nearly the speed to it. So he let his inertia run out to the end of the building and muttered a "huh" into the cooling night air. Someone below had heard him, however, and was kind enough to let him out the service door without pressing charges (or asking questions).
He thought about what he would've said if they did ask questions as he followed Apple Maps to Axinite's home. It took him a quarter mile to exhaust all the possibilities, to find each of them wanting. Couldn't make that mistake twice, then.
By the time he found the right residential street, he'd developed a shiver. Despite two jackets and a light coat in the fall weather, with flocked leggings and ankle boots, he felt the weather eating through his abysmal body weight. By the time he found the correct building, he kept one hand shoved in his coat pocket for warmth while the other suffered the cold. He decided he hated being cold — it was miserable. Should've left being Eion to the summers.
By the time he found the right condo, he was double-checking and triple-checking the address on the phone to the address listed on the door. He knew it was the correct number compared to the phone, but what if he noted the wrong address? Transposed a digit or something? He didn't know what Justice looked like. Thought the bright orange hair would be distinguishable, but glamour had a habit of confounding even the most obvious aspects of a person. Setting his jaw, the youth reached out and knocked.
Then immediately realized it was midnight, and he should've waited for the morrow. Maybe it wasn't too late to leave —
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Posted: Sun Sep 26, 2021 5:18 pm
The light was on in the condo, though it was fairly quiet inside. From the outside, it appeared completely unpersonalized--just a door. Some of the others had wreaths or other visible decorations, but this one was boring. It smelled nice, though. Like maybe someone had been baking inside and now there was just a permanent pleasantness to the area. Justice opened the door before Eion had the chance to leave; there had been only the briefest sound of a chain moving and the door unlocking. Maybe it wasn’t the smartest thing to do, to just open your door for anyone in the middle of the night, but he hadn’t really hesitated. Without his energy signature, Justice looked as unimpressive as his door. The room was kept a comfortable warm temperature; he was dressed in a slightly oversized sweater and lounge pants that could have doubled as appropriate wear if he’d had to run out in the middle of the night. His hair was tied back, but it was still bright orange and unmistakable in a crowd. There was nothing wrong with Justice; he wasn’t unattractive, just unimposing. He didn’t look like he should have the power of a General King. Inside was a little more personalized; everything was decorated with fall colors, but it looked like it had all come right out of a catalogue. A quick glance would yield next to nothing personal--no photographs, no books, no cards. If someone had broken in, they wouldn’t have had any idea what type of person Justice was. Except, that you could see his kitchen from the front door, and there was no reason for someone to have two ovens and four toaster ovens on the counter. The television was on a local news channel, and a few notebooks were on the coffee table. He must have only just closed the laptop he was working on when he’d heard the knock. “Eion,” he greeted, with no care for the hour. It didn’t look like he’d had any plans to sleep any time soon and he stepped aside to let him in. “Welcome, come in. I was worried something came up. Can I get you something to drink?”
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Posted: Thu Sep 30, 2021 2:55 am
The person who caught him half a step from the door looked like he needed a nap, which checked out with Axinite. While they both had orange hair, the two looked nothing alike, and when that stranger said his name, his face neatly transitioned through an optical illusion to one he recognized. Strange how that happened. Disturbing, even.
Eion hated glamours and was glad his seldom saw use.
"Nothing disastrous," he volunteered as he followed the invitation inside. "Just Albite learning to teleport." Which was contradictory to his earlier statement, he supposed. Axinite might be relieved to learn that the skanky oaf hadn't found a way to teleport himself inside an object, or fuse a body part with the building he wanted to land on, or scramble his atoms somehow. If there was a way to screw up teleporting, Albite would find it. Like a cursed playtester.
He expected Axinite's place would look like a stereotypical grandmother's house, with no hints on the exterior to say that he actually baked children into every cookie. But despite all the Hansel and Gretel references he was hoping for, the place was significantly more boring. It looked like something his mom would've designed, were she trying to decorate a middle-class household. Decided he didn't like thinking about his mom, that he still hadn't forgiven her.
"Tea. Black's fine." His fingers found a way to touch the edge of each surface they passed, as if he were expecting a table or a bookcase to become a youma that jumped at his touch.
He wondered: what pretentious freak named their child Justice? Did they know that he became part of the highest echelons of an organization that fed off people's energy and souls, staked out and fed off humans as cattle? If they did, was it a bitterly sharp commentary on the American justice system?
This was weird. He wasn't sure he liked knowing that Axinite was a normal person underneath.
"Don't know what I was expecting, but. I guess this makes sense."
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Posted: Fri Oct 01, 2021 8:31 am
Justice waited until Eion was inside to close and lock the door--habit, nothing threatening. Just being safe. He glanced over his shoulder as he walked towards the kitchen to make the tea. “Oh. It’s boring, isn’t it?” He fussed around in the kitchen, like making tea was his specialty. “I suppose I always meant to decorate. When I first moved here, I didn’t know how long I was staying. Just, ‘We need you here’. So I packed up what I needed and thought I’d just work things out after I’d settled in. And then other things were just always more important.” He almost sounded self-conscious of his decor, but everything was practical. Everything was private. He relaxed in the kitchen; he had water on the stove and it was already steaming. “You can make yourself comfortable, don’t be shy. Is Albite taking well to teleportation? I used to get motion sick,” he mused, but it was such a distant memory that he didn’t seem to dwell for long. “But I have no doubt that you’re an excellent teacher.”
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Posted: Sun Oct 24, 2021 9:20 am
"Yeah," he admitted. Justice's place was a ******** drag, all considered. But Eion could be polite enough to stymie his complaints.
Heard the invitation to make himself comfortable, but the words made little sense. Standing in the middle of the kitchen, he looked about himself and couldn't ascertain what to do with his existence here. He tried to remember — when he lived at home, where did he go? But the memories were cobwebbed from his reticence to reflect on them, and he recalled nothing. What about Albite, then? What would he do? That boy seemed comfortable anywhere. Dwelt on that a moment, then elected to hop up and seat himself on the counter next to the kitchen sink.
That was enough, he guessed. That must look comfortable.
Fingernails picked restlessly at the lip of the counter. His legs swayed as he spoke. "He's a complete idiot," because that was his best estimation of what the boy was doing. "Needs toys to remember how to do it, where to go. Keeps trying to stay in motion, then ******** up his teleport and falls after he reappears. Don't think he'll come off the kinesthetics for a while." And he was in no place to attempt a combat teleport yet.
"How did you stop getting sick?" Interesting that he'd even volunteer that — Axinite spoke so little of himself that it was a surprise to here anything so offhanded.
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Posted: Wed Nov 03, 2021 7:51 am
If Justice looked as if he were going to take offense at Eion agreeing that his apartment was boring, the moment passed. Instead, he almost laughed at how Eion described Albite. Almost. A little smile played on his lips; he gave Eion only the briefest look as he sat by the sink and seemed to think this was a decent enough place for him to be while he fixed up the tea. “Exposure. It was bad for me, at first. Kept trying to stay in motion, couldn’t land on my feet. Fell down a lot, fell into things a lot. Really, an embarrassing display. I couldn’t get my bearings. My General told me it usually took ‘ a little’ time. So after two weeks of it not getting any better, I panicked. He was expecting me to have a hold on things and I didn’t. So I put everything else on hold and just teleported. Constantly.” He paused for a moment as he checked on the tea but it didn't distract him for long and he pulled out two cups. “Overwhelmed myself, passed out for two days, went back to it. Same thing twice more, by the third time I woke up it just didn’t bother me anymore. It’s not good advice, don’t let anyone do what I did. I was able to persuade a Mauvian to help me work up a blueprint for an earring, it circumvents motion sickness and improves coordination. If any of your team is ever having a hard time, let me know.”
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Posted: Fri Nov 12, 2021 9:15 am
Eion pressed his palm to his cheek. "********, you're both cut from the same cloth," he muttered to himself.
They both made a habit of throwing themselves at the problem until the problem was somehow fixed, logic be damned, common sense sold for a penny. Eion guessed that they had different motivations — Axinite was laced even tighter than Kamacite, and Albite was as loose as a hotdog in a hallway — but it came to the same end result. Waru with all his crashes and bruises and oopses off of low buildings, and Axinite marking his territory with whatever he had left for lunch until there was no more lunch or no more nausea.
Eion was starting to think that everyone in the Negaverse was a special level of dysfunctional. Knew it didn't preclude himself, either, for how often Schörl liked to remind him that he did wrong, or thought wrong.
"Schörl used to say, 'if you can't be an example, be a warning." Axinite must've taken that to heart, possibly without even knowing who Schörl was. Or even knowing the phrase.
He kicked his feet back and forth as he watched Justice finish up the tea. He was critical about it, of course, always scrutinizing how other people made tea, if they knew how to make it right. If they knew what right was, or if they just let it steep for ******** knows how long because they forgot about it and never bothered to set a timer. If they'd even be able to taste a difference. If they used loose leaf or storebought tea in those shitty filter paper sachets. Or — worst of all — if they used Lipton.
Eion fully intended to walk out on Justice if he offered him Lipton.
"W — Albite's having a time. Don't know if it's hard, but it isn't easy." Didn't have anyone else who was fresh to teleportation yet, and was thankful for that.
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Posted: Tue Nov 16, 2021 8:06 pm
“Well, hopefully he’ll have mastered it before he needs to use it,” Justice mused, “But he’s in good hands at least.” He didn’t seem to doubt Eion’s competence, or Albite’s. Or, his tea-making skills. The fact that he’d already had some water on the stove when Eion arrived might have said that he’d been in the process of making some for himself, and he spent enough time in the kitchen preparing it before that he had everything comfortably within reach. As he was in all things, Justice had been meticulous in its preparation. Just before the water came to a boil, he’d comfortably settled into routine; he withdrew a metal tin from one of the cabinets--neatly organized, of course--and a clear glass teapot with an infuser inside. Practical, because he needed it to be. Though his particular technique had been obscured, it was clear that he knew what he was doing. He poured a bit of the hot water into the teapot, stirred it, emptied it out in the sink. Four scoops of loose tea in the infuser; he’d poured a bit of hot water over that, returned the infuser to the teapot, and then poured the water over it to let it steep. He cleaned as he went; he poured a bit of water in the two teacups, swirled them, poured them out. Pulled out a nicer, slightly more decorative teapot. Porcelain, and yet, still boring. Hot water for that too, swirled, poured out. He returned the kettle to the backburner, turned the stove off. He didn’t need a timer, he worked like clockwork; three minutes in, he poured the black tea into the other teapot and said, “I’ve got some lemon cookies, if you like? Or do you prefer chocolate? I’ve always got that around.” Finally, he began to pour the tea, a bit into each cup at a time. “Cream, honey? I’ve got the usuals, you can help yourself to anything in the refrigerator if you like.” Equally meticulously maintained; every item was forward facing and organized.
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