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 Posted: Sun Dec 19, 2021 5:35 pm
Sylvite couldn't stop moving. Yeah, she'd always been the kind of person who had issues sitting still, but this was worse than normal. She'd broken two fidget cubes in the last week from squeezing and wiggling them too hard. Paperwork was totally out of the question, no matter what kind of cute, satisfying pens and highlighters she tried to make it a little bit more manageable. That meant her Negaverse paperwork, obviously, but it also meant her school finals. The earrings she'd done for her portfolio had turned out okay, somehow, but the written exams for her gen ed classes had not, and that just left Sylvite even more worked up than she'd been before that. Since sitting in her office was impossible, and even checking in with her subordinates was kind of a struggle, that left field work. Not that her attempts at field work had been going perfectly, either, because of a whole bunch of things, but she hadn't given up yet. The aura she came across was too strong to be Amsvartnir, or Cybele, so that was something. It felt like a senshi, too, and the senshi were usually less gross than the knights, so maybe this would be her lucky day, and she'd actually get useful information out of someone, and her field work would be a success. That'd be cool.
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Posted: Wed Dec 22, 2021 7:58 pm
The energy signature of a General made Malus’ stomach twist uncomfortably; he’d gone out alone, but he wasn’t alone-alone. He had Michel on speed-dial, even if Michel seemed to be actively ignoring him for all things powered. Adria was out looking right now, probably not even so far away. Lupu and Ahri could come help him if he really needed it.
Oh, and he was an Eternal Senshi; he wasn’t helpless.
Just, a little shaken. The Negaverse had taken Lysithea, what chance did he have?
…Except, she was nicer. She trusted more. Cared more. So they’d snatched her up, taken her.
Malus was too paranoid to be seduced into the Negaverse. He hated being out alone, he shouldn’t have been out alone. But, he was desperate. He wanted to find Lysithea as much as everyone else.
He sucked in a breath and balled his hands into fists at his sides as he looked around. He couldn’t see the General, didn’t know who he was dealing with, but he swallowed his fear–choked on it until it went down–and then called out, “If you’re going to stick around can you not stay in the shadows? It’s unnecessarily creepy and it’s not going to give you the jump on me.”
…Well, it might. They could teleport and he couldn’t.
He crossed his arms over his chest and tried to stay focused on where he could sense the energy signature, just in case someone was out looking for starseeds.
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Posted: Fri Dec 24, 2021 8:28 am
"Hey, I'm not creepy," came a voice from the shadows. It probably wasn't helping her point much that there were other noises coming from the shadows, too. Sylvite was still way too fidgety to go all silent stealthy ninja mode. The tulle in her underskirt wasn't exactly quiet. It rustled a bunch as she shifted from side to side, waiting to see what the senshi would do. At one point, she shifted a little bit farther and something under her boot made a crunchy, crackly noise. Yeah, she totally sounded like a ghost. To prove herself, she stepped out from behind the bushes that had been hiding her, her hands raised so that she looked even less like a threat, since apparently now that she was a General, being five foot tall and covered in pink sparkles only did so much to cut the intimidation factor. Although this dude was an Eternal, so it wasn't like she was bearing down with her giant aura with someone who didn't even know what was going on. "I'm just strong," she said, "But, like, you're strong, and I'm not going around telling you that you're creepy." She hoped he wasn't actually creepy. She didn't think she could deal with another dude who had anger issues and death magic right now.
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Posted: Wed Dec 29, 2021 10:51 pm
Malus grit his teeth at Miss Not Creepy, because how could she not know that voices from the shadows was anything but?
Although, she appeared significantly less creepy when she was out in the open and he could see her.
“Yeah, well I’m not the one just standing in the shadows,” he finally said, still a bit guarded. She might not have looked particularly intimidating now the he could see her but it didn’t mean she wasn’t still in possession of some lethal weapon. And youma. And any subordinates she could summon to her.
Malus didn’t relax to any significant degree but it helped that she wasn’t outright attacking. He’d just keep his distance and hope for the best.
“What were you doing in there? …You weren’t hiding from anyone or anything, right? Just…hanging out, alone, in the shadows?”
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Posted: Sat Jan 01, 2022 1:55 pm
"Sorry," said Sylvite after a second, although she didn't exactly sound very sorry. "I just have to be careful, y'know? People are being all weird right now, there was this gross knight dude the other day who thought it'd be super fun to just whack me with this," she wiggled her fingers for effect, "Clock thing? He was super mean, and there's a bunch of other people who're super mean." Cybele, to name one, was still taking the whole 'getting given a second chance in the Negaverse' thing really, really badly, and Sylvite knew she had no problem killing people. She talked to the senshi the way she would've talked to anyone else. Her tone was casual. No, she wasn't grinning, or excited to be talking about this kind of serious war stuff, but she wasn't aggressive about it, either. She wasn't gonna take it out on him unless he started being weird, or doing things where she had to fight him. "Anyway, hi. I'm Sylvite," she said with a smile and a wave. "That's the not-weird way to introduce yourself, right?"
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Posted: Wed Jan 05, 2022 5:39 am
Malus’ heart sank and his stomach flipped. There was only one Knight he knew with a clock thing.
…And Michel was super mean when he wanted to be.
He didn’t ask if it was a Saturn Knight, he didn’t ask anything. He didn’t want to be the one to pay for whatever Michel was doing, and he didn’t want to be a bargaining chip if it came to something worse.
…Besides, if Michel had attacked her, there was a reason, right?
…Maybe.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said, and sounded genuinely apologetic. “I’ve had my fair share of bad run-ins, too. I’m Malus. What, um. What do you want?” he asked, and it took him a few seconds before he corrected, “I mean, I don’t want that to sound rude or anything. I just. Why are you talking to me? Are you okay, or are you in trouble, or…?”
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Posted: Thu Jan 06, 2022 7:20 pm
Sylvite blinked. "I-" She straightened. "I'm fine!" She wasn't fine. She was twitchy and off and looking for a distraction, but saying that would probably put her right back into the creepy category. There was also the part where she was trying to get more information for the database, also mostly as a distraction, but saying that would probably just straight up get her punched. "I dunno, I just think it's better to talk to people than just running around with my knives out all the time. It's better to have friends than enemies, yeah?" It wasn't a lie. Every once in a while, she got lucky and found a senshi who was actually kinda nice, and she could always try to recruit them, or, like- Something.
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Posted: Sun Jan 09, 2022 10:56 am
“Oh. Yeah, I mean. I don’t think I’d have been talking to you if you came running towards me with knives. I probably would have been running. Why do you need friends?” he asked suddenly, because–
Why not make friends in the Negaverse?
He wasn’t so ignorant that he actually believed her, and he might have been gullible in the past but he was trying to do better.
“...I feel like it’s kinda dangerous if someone catches you befriending, you know. Enemy Senshi. Are you up to something, or, like…?”
He shifted positions and tried to give her the benefit of the doubt. “...Do you look so nervous because you’re like, thinking about leaving the Negaverse, or what?”
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Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2022 7:39 am
“What? No! I’m not thinking of leaving the Negaverse.” Where was he getting that idea? Were there rumors about her going around or something? Like, all the way to Order? She knew that a bunch of people that she was connected to had ended up turning traitor, she was very, super, distinctly aware of all that. It didn’t mean anything about her. It didn’t. This guy was being kinda suspicious of her in general, though, which wasn’t helping things. She exhaled, clenching and unclenching her fists to get some of the tension out. “I mean ideally in a perfect world if we made good enough friends, you’d join the Negaverse,” she said, since at this point she didn’t see much harm in putting her cards on the table, “But if you’re not interested, I guess we can go back to the knife thing?” She paused to wiggle some more, then added, “Or I could leave, I guess, since I’m creepy apparently and also I don’t think I actually feel like doing the knife thing.”
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Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2022 6:47 pm
Malus watched her for a long moment and then said, “Please don’t go back to the knife thing. You are a little creepy, but I think that’s just the Chaos. Maybe not you. It just sort of makes me nervous.”
There were a lot of things he could say. A lot of things he could tell her.
A lot of things he could keep to himself, but still.
“I don’t think I’d be a good fit for the Negaverse. I don’t think it’s good for anyone, but definitely not for me. I didn’t like it the last time I had anything to do with it.” Only, he knew what they did to traitors, he’d heard. So he clarified quickly, “I mean, I didn’t leave the Negaverse, I’m not like–it’s not like that. They turned me into a youma. On accident, but still. That’s enough Chaos for one lifetime. And I’m still messed up about it. You know, all Negaverse Agents are one bad day from being a youma themselves, too, right? Or maybe you don’t know. If it’s not the starseeds and the Chaos that takes you, if you piss off the wrong leader, like. They can just do that.”
He shifted positions a little bit and hoped he wasn’t offending her, so he added a brief, “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to say anything mean. I just. I’m still not over it. And it’s been years. Sometimes I still don’t feel like myself. And every time I go out, I wonder if this is the time it happens again. I don’t even like being out on my own. I don’t care about a war, I don’t want to fight. But. It would be nice to know you could walk home and not be afraid of something grabbing you.”
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Posted: Thu Jan 13, 2022 4:26 pm
"Wait." Sylvite blinked, but then she stood up a little bit taller, and she looked at him, and she actually, finally seemed to focus a little bit. "You were a youma?" She knew that youma had used to be people. She'd heard about the eating too many starseeds thing, and also the Chaos overload thing. That one night when she'd been stuck in a cave in the Rift, she hadn't had much to do other than thinking about youma, and all of that stuff. She hadn't met anyone who had come back from being a youma, though. She wasn't actually sure if that would count as being a traitor, like, in the way that meant she was supposed to do the knife thing, but she decided not to dive too deep into thinking about that."What was it like? Like, you didn't have to think too much, did you?" she found herself saying, and then, because there was nobody better to run this by, she added, her voice fast but toneless"Sometimes I think that would be easier. Like, I'm a weird human. I'm a bad General apparently, I keep loosing people. I guess I thought about, like, trying to eat a bunch of starseeds, seeing if I'd be better for the Negaverse that way." It wasn't something she'd said out loud before, even though it had crossed her mind a bunch over the last couple of weeks. She just never had gotten over the thought of eating souls enough to do it.
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Posted: Fri Jan 14, 2022 7:55 pm
“No,” Malus said, like a quick, worried warning. “It’s not easier. Be a weird human, I swear, that is infinitely better than being a youma. Don’t eat the starseeds, don’t do that to yourself. It hurt, but that wasn’t the worst of it. It was like there was an explosion inside of me and it spread, like fire, and needles. Like my sin got turned inside out, like I got chewed up and spat back out as something else. I was small, and I was weak.”
He’d always been though, hadn’t he? He had to remind himself that he was an Eternal Senshi, and even if he was still dangerously close to being underweight, even if he was only a few inches over five feet tall, he was still stronger now.
“I knew who I was at the beginning. I was scared. I remembered how to talk but I couldn’t get the words out. I lost a year of my life, being a tool, I couldn’t do the things I used to do. I started to forget who I was. People started to forget me. My General cared about me, but he didn’t mean to turn me into a youma. But even when he was doing his best, I still got dusted. The other youma picked on me. I lost control of myself. I–a Court saved me. They fixed my starseed. Don’t do that to yourself.”
He was talking quickly, desperately. “Please. Anything is better than that. I didn’t stop thinking, everyone just stopped listening. What’s the point of living if you can’t be yourself? Please. Don’t. You won’t be better to the Negaverse that way, and even if you were, that’s not what’s best for you.”
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Posted: Sat Jan 15, 2022 2:48 pm
Okay, so maybe she shouldn't have expected that he was going to support the whole turning into a youma idea when he'd obviously gone out of his way to turn back, but Sylvite still hadn't been expecting such a, like, passionate argument. She blinked. Then she threw her head back and gave a dramatic, kinda guttural sigh. "So youma still think and have feelings and stuff?" She huffed at the sky again. "Gah, that kinda sucks." She took a slightly deeper breath and snapped back to standing upright. "I mean, I might have to do it anyway if things get really bad and I'm like-" she cut the words off before she could get through that sentence, mostly because this was getting into deep, weird thoughts that she hadn't even put into mental words, thought about like, how everyone was implying that she was acting like a traitor and maybe she should be worried. An Order Eternal didn't need to know about any of that. "I mean, I probably won't if you don't think it'll help?" she said instead. "It's just that I watched my friend get murdered, stuff's been weird. Talking helps me stop thinking about it, so, like," she waved at him. Maybe this wasn't stuff she was supposed to be talking about with a senshi, either, but the words were out of her mouth anyway.
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Posted: Mon Jan 17, 2022 9:27 am
Malus’ expression shifted again, and maybe a part of him knew how easy he’d have been to manipulate. But, he was compassionate, not soft. He’d done his best before and gotten hurt, and it had taken a long time to build himself back up again. To get to where he was now.
He still wasn’t perfect. Sometimes, he wasn’t even good.
But he wasn’t going to turn away someone who seemed like they could have made a very bad decision if they didn’t have someone to talk to. He was just listening, that didn’t mean he was going to do anything stupid.
“I’m sorry about your friend,” he said quickly and honestly. She had said talking helped her not think about it, so he tried not to focus his attention on that. “I’m sorry about a lot of things, but it sounds like you’re hurting.” And like she didn’t have anyone in the Negaverse she could talk to? Maybe she was worried they’d think she was weak or something. They were weird like that. “Just–no matter how hard it gets, don’t try to be a youma. It’s not worth it. It’s like you can feel yourself dying, slowly. You lose who you were, and people forget you were a person, too. There are other options. If things get bad. Look–whatever you’re fighting for, I don’t get the Negaverse, okay? But if you’re afraid for your life or something, or you’re not happy, just–get out. You don’t even have to do it alone or anything. I know people who can help. I’d help. Just, think about it. Don’t make that choice. Don’t let someone make that choice for you. Are you in trouble, do you need help?”
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Posted: Mon Jan 17, 2022 1:54 pm
He said she sounded hurt. Was that what the buzzing in her head had been over the last couple weeks? She wasn't supposed to be hurt. Like, yeah, maybe it was okay if that she'd gotten mad when she'd watched Ochre show up out of nowhere just to run towards a Princess and fight for her. What had happened afterwards wasn't supposed to hurt her, though. What had happened afterwards was just how things went. When she heard Malus say that, though, the weird buzz in her head came back, stronger than ever. Her eyes started getting really watery. She wiped at them with the back of her glove. The rest of what he was saying faded away into that awful static-y feeling, at least until his last question. She shook her head at him even though the tears were starting to leak down her cheeks. "I already told you. I'm not leaving. I'm fine." She sniffed. "I don't need your help." She didn't know why she was reacting like this, but she knew she wasn't getting anywhere with this guy. She knew she needed to take a second to breathe. Sylvite teleported, and buried her face in one of the plushies of her Negaspace office.
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