|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Posted: Mon Dec 05, 2022 1:22 pm
Faustite had never drained someone to death before. Paradoxically, it felt like a step back.
But he had to do it, he reminded himself, as he turned away from the collapsed imminently-no-longer-senshi that lay face-down in the snow. He had tried to starseed her, as the instinct for it was still so tantalizingly strong, but he had all but punched her in the chest. In the moments afterward, he realized he was still wearing the bracelet Jet had given him, and that realization granted him a choice: he could either take the bracelet off, starseed her, and risk eating it on compulsion, or he could keep punching her in the chest until she was winded enough to struggle getting to her feet, then drain her for all she was worth.
She'd cottoned on to his confusion, however, and laughed at him for it. Taunted him for being a General that couldn't reach inside a starseed cavity. He had to admit that swayed his decision.
Soon, her starseed would depart. He didn't want to stick around for that. Faustite had gone back down to street level by the time the glittering gem left its owner's chest and began its long, interstellar journey to the cauldron. There were more below — a brother and sister who were searching around for all those signs of duress, hollering hello like they were trying to get a ghost to respond in a haunted house. He'd landed near the sister, who turned at the sudden billow of heat over her skin, and she'd gotten off a scream before he could drain her unconscious. This provoked the brother, who went reaching into his coat pocket.
Faustite never liked where that went. He vanished in a blink, reappearing behind the man and struck him in the back of the head. He pitched forward, fumbling, and Faustite watched something black fall into the snow. That boy had enough time to drop to his hands and knees to search for it before he slumped over. Faustite didn't have it in him to end that one.
So he kept on, down the snowswept street that so few had been wandering. One more, he told himself. One more, and he could return to his other duties. He could see how Albite's advertising campaign was going, or take camping gear into the Rift and set up for the operation. Or he could pen a few reports, or press Jada for an update on her underling.
Yes, he liked that last idea. Borax was cute.
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Dec 05, 2022 2:22 pm
Pendour had seen a thousand sides of Chaos. She carried those experiences in the scars on her skin, and the scars on her heart. It turned out that she had not seen the side of Chaos that was auras in the distance, a few that were small and bright and one that was dark. She had not, before, felt small points of light fading in the distance as the darkness came close, as if they were stars going out, as if they were being swallowed up. Just feeling it made her chest feel heavy. It made her walk faster. There was still one flicker of light in the distance. Run, she thought, but her thoughts were not enough. So, she kept going. She did pause briefly when she saw the boy's body collapsed in the thin layer of snow. She saw the pocket knife flicked open on the sidewalk, and shook her head at it. Reaching down, she flipped it back into its case before she sent it off into her subspace pocket. Nobody needed to be using that. The boy was alive, so that was a little of the heaviness off of her chest, at least. She unclipped her cape from her shoulders and laid it over him, and then she kept walking and walking. The next person she saw was standing up, and he was on fire, and that made her heart stop for a second. It wasn't the fire itself that bothered her. The clawed fingernails on his hands were more intimidating than that, and nobody had bothered to mention them in any of the stories they'd told her. It was the stories that were swirling around in her head now, making her feel a little frozen even though she was not cold. She understood now why Encke was worried that his sister would end up like the boy she'd just found on the ground, or worse off. She worried for herself, honestly. She wondered how broken the half-youma in front of her was. She wondered if he would try to rip out her other eye with his claws. She wouldn't leave, though. There was someone else around, so she had to at least stall him. "Um, hi," she said, running a thumb over her ocarina.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Dec 05, 2022 2:32 pm
He felt that aura bear down on him and he ignored it. They would find him, or they would not. They would stop him, or they would not. He hadn't faltered in his gait until he heard that soft-spoken, hesitant little hello.
Then he stopped. He half-turned. He stared back at her. Banged-up looking Knight she was, dressed like she was ready to attend one of the many evening balls that he never cared for as a kid. She could've been pretty, he imagined. Could've been beautiful if she wasn't so covered in attacks that she failed to escape. To him, she was a walking reminder to stay sharp in the skill of battle, for he suspected that her unseeing eye was someone else's trophy. He wondered, whose?
In her hand was a musical instrument. He supposed she would use it to summon magic, or throw it at his face. She was transcended, too, so she knew he couldn't end her in a quick and painless manner, pathetic as she looked.
"Here to make a ******** donation?" He asked her, his lip curling at the feel of her aura in the air. "If not," and he leaned toward her, "Piss off."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Dec 05, 2022 2:50 pm
She felt his gaze on her ruined face, on her shoulder, on her pockmarked hands. She shied away from it, the way she always did. Her heart was beating faster in her chest. She was missing her cape. Without it, she had nothing to hide herself in except maybe her hair, which she brushed from behind her ear as she turned her face to a practiced forty-five degree angle. She hadn't been thinking before. Of course she should have hidden her scars. He'd think she was something she wasn't, now. So many of them did. "Sorry," she murmured, with all the posture of a submissive dog, although she stole glances at him the best she could with her face half turned away. She considered the risks of stepping forwards. Her breath was already shallow. His eyes were already sharp. She'd promised Nectaris that she'd try, and that last Order aura was only so far away. It needed more time. "If you need energy, you can have some," she said, and she reached out a hand. He was strong. She didn't think he'd need to touch her for it, but she didn't mind if he wanted to. Better hers than other people's, she thought. "Although, why do you need it if you're a General?" she asked, with just a little curiosity in her voice, nothing more. Even the fear was shoved deeper into her chest. "Don't you have the newer ones to take it for you? They're the ones I always see around, talking about how they have to take it back to someone like you."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Dec 05, 2022 3:07 pm
Bold of her to offer up her hand for energy. He assumed she must have found more Lieutenants or Basics than Captains or Generals, and her following words confirmed it for him. That she tried to pry in a way that was antagonistic surprised him; she had been so terribly shy of him before. Maybe she dug out a piece of spine from inside that ocarina with which she fiddled.
Far be it for him to care about that. He approached her in a few steps — energy from anyone was good enough for his purposes — kept his eye contact and took up her hand as she offered it. If she expected the old-fashioned way, then she would learn why it was better to never have offered her hand at all. Like anyone else, her skin felt cold to the touch. Felt like there was no tremble in it.
Faustite's other hand opened supine, and in it formed a series of violet orbs as he siphoned off what he wanted. If she collapsed in the snow, it was her fault for offering.
"What's it matter to you what I do with my time?" Faustite watched her, squeezed her hand with force. "Or who I send in my place?" Never mattered to anyone before. That she bothered to ask had him wonder if this was a fishing exercise. Send someone mutilated, someone disarming. Send someone like a child with a bomb they can arm in the center of the enemy's tent. Send anything that sucked sympathy out of people, that let them feel they were in a position of power, that they were gods to this pathetic, shriveled up thing, and milk them for every scrap of information they could get.
Wasn't that what this was? Faustite's mouth twitched.
"If you want classified information, dig it out of someone dumber." stari_maga On fire ;;
Range: Self
Duration: Constant
Use Count: N/A
Miss Chance:
Effect: There's a fire in the center of this boy. It's caged, but it gives off light and heat and generally confers attributes that one would expect from fire. He does not like being used as a stove.
In combat, Faustite is easy to spot via his internal light source. His temperature risks burns to the degree of player's choice. If the player has no preference, assume third degree with prolonged physical contact or second degree with normal combat contact. He can intentionally light flammable things and be used for the same properties of normal fire (eg this property can be used against him).
If the fire is completely extinguished, he dies. He needs to eat and do other tasks to fuel the flame. The general rule is: the more he heats, the more he eats.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Dec 05, 2022 3:34 pm
"I'm curious," she answered him, her voice soft as soft, even as her energy came off of her in waves, like spider's silk. Her eyelids fluttered. She was feeling it a little. Her energy flowed freely through the glowing marks on her skin, but she didn't collapse. Not yet. "But, it's okay. You don't have to tell me if it's a secret." She had to stay strong. She had to keep distracting. Keep talking, too. Relationships didn't happen overnight. She just needed to make sure she managed an introduction for herself before she ended up as another cold body, so that she could make sure she was helping with Pendour's cause. His had was burning hot, but that she could take. Her hands were already dotted with burn scars, and what wasn't from Caedus's starseed were from Encke's magic. What were a few more? "I guess um, the whole war is over taking people's energy, isn't it? Their starseeds? People don't like that, and some people choose to fight back." She didn't, which was obvious as she watched the way her own energy pooled in his fingertips. "I've never gotten a straight answer on why-" her voice faltered as her eyes fluttered again, but she bit her cheeks and kept talking. "Why you can't just stop. It would, um," she exhaled shakily, "Make things easier."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Dec 05, 2022 3:44 pm
This one was stuffed with energy. So bloated with it that Faustite would've drained two to three people by now. He would've found it impressive, if being cattle that was a cut above the rest was something admirable.
She didn't flinch at his heat, and that took more precedent for his attention than her energy content. Her skin felt rough, mottled, maybe covered in as many scars as her face and shoulder. Must've cut or broken or burnt down to the bone, enough that her nerve endings were singed off. If not that, then she had a high pain tolerance — likely just as well from those scars.
Curious. This one had a story that she didn't want to tell.
"Can't answer for everyone," he started as he decided to release her hand. The energy he'd drawn off of her, like a hundred thousand threads of light, were vanished to nowhere. "Imagine most of them buy the idea that we're protecting Earth. That we need energy and starseeds to fund the army that defends people from senshi and knights. How those knights and senshi would take over Earth if they were left unchecked. How you'd ruin things for everyone.
"Whatever things were," he added, rolling his eyes. "Whatever wasn't already ruined."
His hand clutched closed, and over it materialized what used to be a Pluto Knight's shield glove bracelet. Pieces of it showed that distant past, but it was overlaid with Rift crystals to now power its use. "If I give you my answer, then you're going to do something for me.
"Hold still."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Dec 05, 2022 5:04 pm
As they held their palms together, she could feel her skin begin to blister and burn. Her nerves were there, not badly damaged. It was just that she was no stranger to pain, and she met his firey eyes with her half-lidded ones as she did not pull away for several more seconds. She'd caught his attention, it seemed. She wasn't collapsed in a frigid heap, not yet. He'd let go of her body, and of her energy, and now she was just standing there. She swayed on her feet a little as her energy vanished away to somewhere she could not see, but she kept her ground. Somewhere in the distance, the other aura flicked out, hopefully into safety, and at that, Pendour let out a breath. That was all she'd wanted. Whatever this man with his terrible hands wanted to show her, wanted to see from her, was a bonus. He had something with a Pluto symbol, something from a knight. Now Pendour's attention was caught. Just the sight of a symbol like that gave her hope that she hadn't had a few seconds ago. "Maybe I've heard a little of that story before, about us being awful," she said as she stepped forwards, as willing as she'd been before. "I never thought it was that convincing, really. Even you allies usually don't think it's right." She held still.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Dec 05, 2022 5:16 pm
"Maybe I don't care that you have," he returned, echoing her cadence. With his one hand occupied by the shield glove bracelet, he used the other to gesticulate — to follow his words with delicate, curved claws.
His attention never left her face, her unseeing eye. "Take energy because I don't care. Don't give a s**t about the human race, they ruined their ******** society, they squat in its ashes, and now they look to saviors from outer space to preserve their insipid mess for them. ******** do I care if I kill one, or two, or five? Twenty? A hundred? They're just meatbags full of energy.
"So I keep draining. As long as there's people, I. Keep. Draining."
Then he pressed his bracelet-laden palm against her chest, hard enough to push her back an inch.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Dec 05, 2022 5:45 pm
Maybe he thought that his answer was going to disgust her. Maybe he thought that it was meaningless, that he was trading whatever knowledge that he was going to get from his Pluto bracelet for something that would just make Pendour see him as a monster. It wasn't true. When someone actively shifted their perspective to be kinder, to be more trauma-informed, the first thoughts that they had to shift were thoughts like what is wrong with you? Instead, you had to ask yourself things like, what happened to you?Something had happened here. With every word he spat, every vitriol-laced complaint against humanity, her face softened. At the mention of disconnect, where he said he didn't care about ending lives, it softened more. That part was partially the Chaos, and she knew it, but it was clear to her that something had happened here. There was a story here. He likely hadn't gotten much kindness in the past. Maybe she could help. She'd get burned for it again before it was all said and done, she knew that, but if she could learn more, she could help. In return for what his rant told her, he would get a piece of her own story as the cold metal pressed against her chest. Then the exhaustion caught up to her, and she fell to her knees.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Dec 05, 2022 6:06 pm
There was a tedium to sifting memories that he never referenced. Never thought about it until he touched someone with that bracelet, and even then, the thought came only afterward. The memories, they weren't instantaneous transfers of information, and they weren't so devoid of emotion as watching a movie. Memories were remembered with the body, through the colored lens of emotional experience. What he saw was what she saw, what he heard was what she heard, but what he felt was what she felt.
And that was both a hurt he could not describe — a hurt that happened for the suffering of others, was as close as he could ascertain — and a purely pitiless fear. Rooted to the spot, hand extended outward though the nameless Knight had long slumped into the snow, he felt that scrape of claws across his face. Felt the sharp shock of his body with the diffuse, skull-breaking throb afterward.
He wanted to shriek out all that borrowed pain, but then it was gone. He was himself again. he was back in the snow again. And as he drew those first, tentative, shaken breaths, he blinked several times. Blinked the belief back into himself that he had two eyes, that he could touch them both and assure himself that they were both, in fact, working.
Even then, his body wanted to believe one was gone. Faustite looked down at her face, now half-covered in delicate white hair.
"You stupid ******** b***h," he hissed, words beginning to sizzle on his tongue. "You brought that on yourself. Who ******** taught you to see people that way. To see us that way."
He petted his own face again. Blinked again. ******** it, he was going home.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Reply
