Quote:
Backdated to early January.
Faustite told himself he didn't have anything better to do. In truth, that was so; since he was injured, returning to work had been a difficult that was better avoided until he was more physically recovered. A General-King on crutches was really only useful for things like paperwork, and Faustite preferred gouging out his own eyes and eating them to spending eight hours a day pawing through documents that were all too easy to set aflame and 'lose'. Granted, much of that was digitized now, to the benefit of the paperwork and not himself. His distaste for it remained unchanged, however.
However, his hatred for boredom was nearly as potent as his hatred for paperwork, and Faustite found himself at a loss for tasks to accomplish while home-bound. Hestia cleaned damn near everything, and to a far better capacity than he could manage. For a time, he tried to make his own messes both to challenge her and see how far her cleaning prowess went, but she seemed to overcome even his most heinous of cleanliness crimes without so much as a negative word in his direction about it. After only a couple hours, it was as if those messes never happened. As if he never got soot on the ceiling or spilled a pan of hot grease, eggs, and other sticky foods onto the floor and cabinetry.
The few hobbies he had weren't doing it for him either. He could only read for so long until his hands hurt, though magazines were easier to lay out and prop himself up to read. Even Muri's handmade dirty mag saw some use to pass the time, particularly when Faustite sent Waru out on a bullshit mission to obtain more pantry items. But once he read (or reread) it enough, his mind needed something else to do. But his mind was a finicky thing, ever driven toward work for the Negaverse.
It took him a while to conceive of disentangling the colorful nicknames for his team and dividing up the spoils that Muri had socked away in the Farnsworth as anything nearing Negaverse business, but he was finally able to frame it as morale-boosting while the team was still diligently following their duties. Plus, they needed to vacate the corner of his bedroom where they had been staring back at him, waiting to find their proper owners.
Some of those gifts were easy to sort. Some were labeled with the recipient's proper name, so they were set in a box and sent with a large dog youma to the appropriate room. The gifts then made their way onto the bed of the intended recipient, albeit with a margin more youma dog slobber than usual. However, that only took care of Alkemene's, Albite's, Tama's, and Jadarite's gifts. That left three that had colorful nicknames, and one that boiled his blood well enough that he wasn't yet certain what to do with it.
The dragon water bottles seemed like they had to belong to Fafnir and Heliodor, both in color and design, though Faustite had no idea what 'Fire and Blue'd' referred to, or if it meant one or the other. They both had blue in their uniforms, but Fafnir's was more dominant, so the one reading Fire and Blue'd went to his room. The other one, with reds and golds, was quarantined while he debated setting it on fire.
The water bottle that had a heart monitor design on it was contemplated for a while longer, as Faustite mentally cycled through the names of his teammates and their respective uniforms. Some of them he revisited two to three times as potential candidates before he finally decided that this set must belong to Pax, so the set of water bottle and journal was then delivered to the appropriate room. Two sets of gifts remained, then, and Faustite needed to decide what to do with them.
Faustite relented enough toward Heliodor that he sent the scarf and water bottle to his room, to be found whenever he remembered that space existed for him. The books however, were confiscated, in part because he decided Heliodor needed to earn them, and because Faustite was going to need more reading material shortly. They'd make their way to their intended recipient eventually, he figured, and any singe marks would lend them more character.
That left Lilith's set of gifts. Faustite was well aware that Lilith was either dead or purified, having vanished so abruptly, and having known her guile and resourcefulness, he doubted that she died. The alternative was worse, however, and looking at her gifts was such a torturous affair that he decided he was owed recompense for having to deal with them. And since he wasn't able to exact his revenge on his own, he would have to leave that feat in the hands of the rest of the Negaverse. But that was a challenge to arrange later. He set the water bottle aside for it.
He sent the turquoise scarf with the youma dog to Hestia's room, both as a gift and as something like a training scent for Hestia to follow to its intended recipient. Included with it was the turquoise bag and an addendum to the attached note, stating 'find her'. If Hestia could drag her back or do away with her, then that was well worth the anguish and rage of having to look upon what was meant for Lilith.
With all that rigamarole settled, Faustite sent his little helper back to the Rift with an energy orb and laid back down to nap.
shiningamisgirl
muri xmas gifts in albite's room!
noir songbird
muri xmas gifts in alkmene's room!
lizbot
hestia got a scarf and a challenge!
whimsical blue
muri xmas gifts in fafnir's room!
kolina
some of muri xmas gifts in heliodor's room!
stari_maga
muri xmas gifts in jada's room!
daekie
muri xmas gifts in pax's room!
meighei
muri xmas gifts in tama's room!
