Construction in Destiny City is a constant; it is never surprising to see buildings come and go. However, almost overnight it seems as though a large project has suddenly come to life. Where there was once an abandoned strip mall and a sad, trash laden park, the ground has now been completely bulldozed. There's no information about this project available in any media outlets or online, and all attempts to research it result in dead ends. A large fence has been put up, but twelve feet of wire isn't enough to keep out anyone curious enough to investigate. Cameras are set up all over the place and there is a strange, almost magical energy. The space is large enough to be a theme park. Strangely, frosted glass stars in an array of colors can be found randomly across the lot. Someone obviously has big plans for this space already, some strange, fantastical buildings are going up. The space feels strangely large, and once you have jumped the fence it feels like Destiny City is a world away. The sky seems brighter and the city lights seem far away, almost as though there is some strange barrier separating the construction zone and the rest of the city. And, oddly enough, if you are standing outside the fence and looking into the construction zone, everything appears blurry and it's hard to make out the details. It's strange, for sure, but nothing seems wrong about it. Yet.
Inspiration piqued, tools of trade in hand, Albite stepped up to the abandoned sprawl of what once had been a shining attempt at progress. He couldn’t tell anymore if it was before him had once been an old mall, an old hospital, an old college. Any markers or remnants of what once had been, were gutted down to the bare beams and ruined seams of a now abandoned structure.
Because progress demanded movement, even of things that seemed unbendable, and utterly immovable all their own.
Shapes re-poured, holes re-bored, which made an excellent landscape for playing on! New construction and trash heaps went together like furikake on rice! And Albite was all for it, ready to try out something more questionable in the ‘legal’ department than the simple flares, gasoline, and lantern debris he’d been dabbling in.
Hestia had said thermite reminded her most of their boy, boss, beloved inferno of a lead man! Albite agreed wholeheartedly, figured this was the best place and best way to go on and test it!
Make ruins of ruins — wrecks of wrecks — stopping halfway cold when he realized the place he’d been planning his biggest blaze yet! The kind that incorporated stone and steel! Would have to ******** wait — apparently? Because of course DC’s weirdness just had to be *weird* cranked up past twelve.
“Well….damn it…”
Maybe this was as good a time as any? To unwaste his night by annoying a certain page…
See if he’d dug up any info….
If he wanted a boost over a fence?
All thoughts running idly through Waru’s head, as he plucked an emerald charm free from the hoop he kept the rest on, rubbing it between forefinger till warm. Waiting….till the calling signal got a pickup — and a shamrock shaded order type up in his yard…
“My milkshake brings alll the boys…even off season…” Albite laughed to himself, relaxing onto a half-shattered pillar. Idly staring over the zone…
Waiting.
Posted: Wed Jul 16, 2025 11:27 pm
Blarney, good as his word, had left the fires alone, aside from making sure that they weren’t hurting anyone or lighting any other important, lived-in buildings ablaze. That said, there were other problems throughout the city, and that meant patrols to be done, and people to protect, youma to be dusted…
Blarney absently shook his hand, something feeling not quite right–and looked down in confusion when the feeling didn’t go away. It was coming from the ring Albite had given him, faintly warm and pulsating. He raised an eyebrow, shifting back behind the wall he’d been using for cover, to study the ring further. When he moved his hand this way and that, it pulsed or quieted, like it was playing hotter-colder.
…Sure. Why not.
Blarney glanced around once more; it did seem fairly quiet in this quadrant, and he didn’t have anything better to do, so..
Blarney bounded away, following the feeling and the encouraging tug coming from his shiny new accessory. It seemed unlikely that he would call him just to kill him, but…all the same, if he ended up having to call for help or needing to explain himself later, he might just leave out the ring part and say he stumbled upon him by utter chance.
Soon enough, Blarney recognized where he was being called to. The big construction zone, where something was being built. The fact that Albite was calling him there didn’t exactly fill him with warm and fuzzy feelings–more a light sprinkle of dread–but he pushed ahead anyway. Maybe Albite knew who or why this building was being built.
The barrier looked…far less accessible than it did the first time he’d visited. Maybe they’d beefed up security since he’d…you know, broken in. Maybe they had spotted him on the camera after all.
He glanced from the barrier to the deserted street around it, scanning first for a body and then just following the dual tugs of the internal radar and the tug of the ring on his finger.
“Hello?” Blarney called cautiously. “Albite? You rang?”
***
Ah, there was that bright, orderly aura!
“Shamrocks!” He waved from his perch, casually sliding off and down to approach the blip of an aura as it crossed into his space. The Earthy green really stood out on the other man, not that he was one to talk! His own self only saved by a smattering of blending blacks, the rest of it, noise he made simply by walking, a dead give away of a location in every hair dragging step.
“You see all this weirdness? Like a smudge over the lense of the world…” Gesturing past the fence line, with its tall cameras, and taller chain links surrounding. It was hard to see in from the outside, even if he got high enough up to do it. Not that the new splotch of weirdness under construction was really why he was here tonight.
Even if smashing up the hunks of frosted material was tempting…..
“Tho’ s’not why I called you…” He didn’t look any more rested than the weeks preceding this, but Albite did look at least a bit less wound past his snapping point, his grin easier, steps tired. “There’s better fodder for the weirdness in the wilds of this city than Pages…and if I remember correctly? You had questions?”
Questions or…something like that? He wasn’t entirely sure anymore, remembered the task he’d set the man on, knew what he was willing to pay on his end in order to keep an Earth Page very politely in his back pocket. Not as a snitch! Never that! Just – well – a friend on the other side? Always invaluable those kinds of connections, just in case….
“And I promised t’give you answers when I was feeling ******** up about everything? N’cluding your entire existence in my space.” And whatever he had been feeling? Too hot to touch, not worth looking in the direction of! Not when what mattered in this moment was how he was feeling less of it! Enough less to play show and tell and answer twenty questions.
“Speaking of space…any sign of my personal most wanted? Any…transcended knights of the glen running about…or…ah…wild bananas with pink horns?”
***
Blarney tilted his head slightly at Albite; he did look better than the angry, haunted man he’d initially met, but still not to what he imagined his fully-better self might look like. He was not the easiest man to follow, but Blarney was sure that there were plenty of people who would say the same about Blarney himself, once he got going.
All the same, he had no idea about a pink-horned banana.
“I haven’t met any transcended knights,” he said with a shake of his head. He hadn’t really tried that hard to find this so-called Hy-Brasil, because he had no idea what he would do if he did happen across them. Hit them over the head with his stick? Call Albite? Call Aruna? Every time he thought about it, the guilt roiled in his stomach the same way it had when Albite had told him it was an Earth Knight who had orchestrated the kidnapping/torture.
How could that be the team he was on? Sure, he’d kind of blown it off when Halia had first told him about it–everyone knew that torture was far and away one of the least reliable methods of gathering information, didn’t they?--and he’d sort of chalked it up to…well, this was kind of war, wasn’t it? The bad guys were bad guys and when you were a bad guy, a bad thing might happen to you on occasion, might it?
But that logic seemed sad, frail and increasingly callous standing in front of Albite, with all his grief and rage (and his three-headed bird friend, which had left Mason keeping half an eye on the sky every time he left the house, regardless of if he was powered up or not). The longer he was an Earth Knight, the more he thought he was figuring out what he was for - what being an Earth Knight was about.
And none of what he’d pieced together totalled up to ‘kidnap’ or ‘torture’, nevermind both.
In Blarney’s heart, being an Earth Knight meant rescuing people. It meant checking up on the people you saved, to make sure they stayed saved. It meant contributing, whenever you could, to the greater common good. Even if all you had was a stick and a can-do attitude.
“I guess–before we get into who I met,” he said, shaking his head to clear it; he didn’t want to shove Eles into the path of a Chaos Senshi prematurely. Or maybe at all, if he’d gotten memory-wiped to get away from them…if he was even magical to begin with…a lot of ifs, too many ifs to get into. At least…too many to leap into that blind, yet. “Before we get into all that, you were going to tell me about your friend. If you wanted to, if it wouldn’t…upset you too much. I can’t really tell you if I’ve seen anything relevant if I don’t know what you’re looking for, right?”
***
“S’ah shame…” He couldn’t help but look at the Page like he was the newest, shiniest shamrock on the farm. Albite marveled at it all sometimes, wondered if he himself had once seemed so…freshly naive? Friendly and approachable? Maybe…
He didn’t always feel that way anymore, but a deal even held up in half-assed ways was a deal. He’d called, the page had come, chances were he’d do it again sometime? Waru figured it was worth betting his money on. Or at least his time…
“You really are fresh, huhn? S’okay…I was too..once…and I probably read even less of all the things n’you do…the people, your people? Order types. They do keep tabs on us, yanno. Even if it’s just in the rumor mill kinda way instead of the written ones.” He had his suspicions, though he couldn’t say for sure if they were right, but there was always a feeling that Order and Other weren’t so misaligned that they weren't all keeping data on each other…
Not his own kind of data, hopefully, or all the stars would’ve died n’stayed dead. He was a sham of a record keeper, database entries were the sun to his vampire heart in nearly all ways.
“Which means— that you need t’branch out a little, Shamrock. You need to make a village of your own, an army’s worth of family. Or you’ll end up dead and not knowing the best parts of why you’ve ended up that way…” Albite tsk’d, shaking his head, mock sadness gauzed over with a teasing grin. “You’re a knight, yeah? You deserve to know things!” He supposed that meant he could share some details, didn’t it?
“Liiikeee…” Dreads tucked back behind his shoulders, he took up to walking, nodded the little page along. Always it was better to do these kinds of talks while in motion, to make a dance of it, instead of a stand-still monologue. “Who I lost? Was my friend – a fellow Senshi –” He motioned to the marks of chaos, prominent hole in head and chest. He shrugged over the details. Lost, left, same difference in his own eyes. A very ‘these things happen’ feeling surrounded the bruised thought, he wondered at which point in his life he would get over those kinds of things? If they’d ever be small enough a loss to stop stinging for so long…
“But who I’m looking for right this second…who I’m missing most right now...” And that wasn’t to say he didn’t miss Syrus, wasn’t looking for the blond too! Perfunctory as going through the motions of that was; putting up an official flyer, a missing persons ad, the whole nine…
It was different inherent to the fact that he knew, deep, deep down, that wherever Syrus was? He was probably somewhere safe, happy, keeping to himself and oh so very likely purified (and gods please not kidnapped!) – Or so Waru was hedging his bets on, if only for the fact that he couldn’t seem to summon the man anymore. Not that he’d tried until well after it’d been far to late to bother trying…
But he had tried…
Was making his peace with the failings inherent in that, in ash and fire, in crumpled notes stained with spray paint instead of tears.
“Is my husband.” He paused for a moment, fingers caught in playing with endless weighty lengths of hair, till he could pull a silver tip round finger and thumb, his face filled with consternation for only a moment; wondering if this was too much? Too little? A reveal that should’ve best been kept a secret? If anyone would’ve believed a Page who was too green to exist….who wouldn’t just brush off his antics as….well...exactly that, right? Antics. Unofficial, unsanctioned, utterly insane, antics! The kind written about of Senshi with cracks running all the way through, the kind that made ascension look like a comphy sort of retirement, a gentle blankness, a—
“But you’d know him if you’d seen him, Mr. Green with Envy. I promise you would. He’s on fire nearly all the time, he’s metal, and smoke…” He twisted on heel to look Blarney back over, mop of hair to tippy toe, a crow calculating the worth of the sparkly. “He’s copper and ozone.”
He’s mine—
He didn’t say, because it needn’t be said, because it was only true to a point. Faustite was his as much as he was the negaverses as much as he was the teams. Shared, beloved, and only in Albites heart that eternal *mine mine mine*.
“Greater General Faustite? Sovereign extraordinaire…he’s not the kind of person you miss..not visually speaking. Makes me think that, really? Wherever he is *can’t* be up here, no matter who’s telling me this is where he might ‘possibly’ be….” Did he say he was running on hunches from unreliable bugs? That he was willing to chase cars to nowhere, to believe anything so long as it was something other than the nothing he’d been left to chew on? He chose action over stillness always, in all ways! Even when those actions were wrong.
“Chances are he’s still down where he was…or in the Rift…or..” Albite shrugged, grinned like whatever, sighed in reluctance at how little he had to give. “As you’ve noticed? S’really ********’ hard to miss s**t when it’s on fire…even the freshest Page…n’most mindless person…would notice something like that.”
***
Blarney kept pace with him - he didn’t like to stand still for long, either. He couldn’t help but smile at the nickname - Shamrocks. He liked it. Even though he had zero shamrocks on display on his uniform, he could understand where it had come from. He refrained from telling Albite that every year on St. Patrick’s Day he and his sister covered the McCaffrey Mobile minivan in three-leaf clovers with one four-leaf clover hidden somewhere on the body of the car; that was the sort of identifying information that would absolutely get his civilian identity busted. Even though he was sure Albite would find that bit of information hilarious, he couldn’t risk Madeline–like Albite said, the bad guys were always taking notes, and Blarney couldn’t forget that no matter how affable he seemed, Albite was still a bad guy. Technically.
He also refrained from informing Albite that he actually hadn’t read anything about anyone - good, bad, neutral or otherwise. He didn’t even know where to begin on doing so, but he didn’t want to appear that oblivious and uninformed–at least, no more than he already did by his whole…energy.
He only skipped one step when Albite finally told him who he was actually looking for. He had never had the pleasure/unmitigated terror of meeting General King Faustite, but he remembered the name; it stuck out, clearly, in Halia’s retelling of the whole kidnapping/torture experience. How she’d said she’d felt him, without even seeing him. That if she’d known he was on the way, she wouldn’t have bothered to show up to defend her fellow Order members; that was how scary he was.
And this guy was Faustite’s husband.
“Oh,” Blarney said in a tiny little voice, rapidly adjusting his mental math of his understanding of Albite–this guy was Faustite’s husband? “Oh. Okay.” Faustite was missing. Missing-missing. Even on the side of the bad guys.
There was absolutely no way that the good guys had taken him out. Right? Even Blarney would’ve heard about that. They probably would’ve thrown a parade in the street. No way was General King Faustite dead.
Which left missing.
His mind flickered to Eles, stripped of his memory. But–he was not on fire. Not even a little bit. The fact that Blarney had met someone who had no memory and the fact that Albite was looking for someone who had vanished into thin air were…
A coincidence.
He took a breath. In a city like this one, there was a real, actual possibility that it was a coincidence. Probably a lot of people got their memories magically wiped, and it just so happened that Blarney had run into one of those many people. He couldn’t just assume that the memoryless person he’d happened to run into was the exact person Albite was looking for. The odds of that were truly astronomical, Blarney told himself. And Eles was very much not on fire. He’d even gotten energy-sucked, which seemed like an odd thing for one bad guy to do to another bad guy, didn’t it? Eles was probably a good guy that had gotten whammied. Or maybe a newly-minted, former-bad-guy kind of good guy that was recovering from getting whammied. Albite was probably right - Faustite was somewhere else, like the Rift.
The Rift.
The Rift?
“...What’s the Rift?” Blarney asked, almost absently, because his mind was still spinning. There was no way. There was no way.
…Right? Right?
***
“If everything the light touches is yours, Blarney? Then ‘The Rift’ — is an elephant graveyard. The shadows that lie below, and the Youma who inhabit it? Are the hyenas. N’you trust me? They are ******** hungry — always — forever.” Warning and worship in one, he sounded as in awe of youma and their ‘homes’ as a hunter did a tiger of the undying, voracious variety.
“Metallia has her lands that can’t be touched by outsiders. The exact same as you, n’yours have — whatever you have? Places that aren’t meant for the likes of me. Because being ‘one of them’ isn’t the same as ‘being them’ — yanno? It’s all very ‘honorary’ insofar as titles go — being — Ah…‘Chaos’, yeah? Doesn’t make me allofasudden an ‘agent’.” He wasn’t sure if he was explaining anything right, not exactly, because he didn’t understand it all himself. Because he didn’t care to. He could’ve had this argument a thousand times over and his answer always would’ve ended the same. His own willful choice, above birthright, every time. Chaos because he wanted it —
Metallia, because within her was where he’d made his home. His team, their youma, their Senshi, the negaverse. That same singsong level of *mine mine mine* that he chanted for his closest loved ones. He chanted for them all—
“Technically? I was still born of the stars. Same as any Senshi. Just because I chose this..to be awoken this way…doesn’t negate any of that. Not ever. Praxidike is still a place on a map in the sky. It’s still mine.“ Hand over his heart, fingers across the threads of the hole adjacent there, and he couldn’t help but shrug off the seriousness that lingered in his voice. “I’m still of it, even if what I’ve also decided to be is Albite, yeah? Right here. On earth. For Earth. I’ve chosen to be a mineral in the mud of this mantle, and t’leave that eternal space for the dust it’s gathered in my ancestors passing….” He blinked at the landscape beyond the fence again, let his gaze skirt back to the Page, smiled.
“A forsaken inheritance till my next iteration, maybe? Heh…you should ask those Senshi you meet what they stand for n’why. Hell, ask someone where ‘your’ Senshi is…if n’when you get a chance? Might be kinda enlightening…” He shrugged, grin kicking up a notch as he found his way back to the origins of his poorly plotted info dump. His next glance at Blarney rather apologetic in nature.
“But..yeah…in my little analogy, Faustite—-he would be King Scar. But only if Scar had also been half a hyena himself! N’he? Can go to the places I can’t out there…yanno..the whole..‘I’m an enemy wearing the colors of my enemy’s enemy’ — an— uh — traitor in all ways?” He snorted at himself, wincing for the disservice he was doing the example. He knew what Kama and the others would’ve said, what Jet, or Faustite or even Axinite would’ve said.
He wasn’t as succinct, or eloquent — he knew he was welcome and valued — that he had his prowess and his niche — knew his choice felt like the most correct one, but explaining that without falling into the pit of his own backstory? Without giving everyone he loved away? It was maybe better to stick to the basics as he best understood them.
“Like, do you know about Senshi and maus? That whole bond. That’s agents n youma…except not quite that? Maus can refuse Senshi…youma can’t refuse *certain* agents…” He held up his hands in apology, his face a shrug like his shoulders. “Half-youma are entirely another godamned thing…” He tsked, at his own expense, his own perceived failings. How long had he served that he couldn’t do better? “It’s actually really complex and kinda exhausting to explain…for me at least? For anyone else? M’sure they’d do it justice.”
***
Blarney could only blink in silence as he listened to Albite, absorbing what he said - matching this and that piece to information he already had from other sources. Expanding his horizons.
He had never heard the word - name? - Metallia before, for instance.
“Okay,” Blarney said simply. “Thank you. Really.” He was silent for another few moments, head swimming with information; everything he learned just spawned more questions, like he was a goshdang investigative reporter instead of a Page.
So he decided to investigate the question that seemed most pressing at the moment - what if Eles was, somehow, Faustite?
“How did you fall in love with King Scar?” Blarney asked, but blushed immediately after the words left his mouth. “If–I mean, I know that’s a super personal question, but–presumably you didn’t just look at the nearest on-fire guy and go ‘dang I want me some of that’. Or maybe you did! No judgement, I just–” he trailed off and shrugged. “It might be helpful for me to know more about the guy you’re trying to find, y’know? I can tell you at least I haven’t heard anything about Faustite one way or the other from anyone on my side, except that he exists and he’s terrifying and could chew me up and spit me out easy as breathing.”
Which did sort of beg the question - why was he trying to find this guy again? Wasn’t it objectively better for him and all good guys if Faustite stayed missing?
And then he glanced at Albite again, and thought of the fires in the dumpsters, and thought of Blarney the castle, all alone for so long. Didn’t he have an obligation to help where he could, regardless of alignment? It’s not like Albite was asking for Faustite back because he wanted to get back to their regularly scheduled programming of death and destruction (probably). He wanted him back because he loved him. He was his husband for crying out loud - he was worried about him, and what would Blarney do if it was him missing Madeline or Khaz or Halia, and they refused just because they were technically on different sides?
Well, that was the difference between the good guys and the bad guys, wasn’t it?
“So tell me. What am I looking for when I’m looking for your husband?”
***
A laugh startled from him, the way Albite took the question good naturedly, with wide eyes and a wider grin. There was no smothering the shocked guffaw, even behind his own hand.
‘Gods – what a ******** question – how did I fall in love with him?’
“Oooh…just a little personal, huh? Haaah–holyshit–shamrocks–n’shillelagh’s?! Y’really don’t pull any punches, do you? Don’t even wear gloves…s**t…” As Blarney went on he started laughing, loud, genuine joy for the way he felt judged in the best way, called out on the reddest of carpets. Was that what he’d actually done? And…hell…it was close enough, wasn’t it? He’d walked up to the first guy, only kinda on fire, and had his mind blown so wide by all the possibilities that he’d said ‘Sup, my names Albite, nice t’meet you, can I die for you too? Since m’already down here n’such —’
Because Faustite seemed as good a cause as any to die for, at first. It was the whole ‘live for people’ bullshit that took so much ******** convincing for him to do. Over and over, again and again, with his entire team helming it. No amount of love for life kept him from needing reminders, and needing them consistently, at that.
So he didn’t quite answer Blarney, not yet, not that way. The way it felt too personal to share with some page he’d met all of twice and didn’t trust in spite of how far he was sure he could’ve thrown him.
“I–he–he’s—” Albite cleared his throat, shaking his head, the cloying bits of laugh free like excess energy he didn’t know how to keep hold of. “He’s on fire, Blarney. No – I mean – I mean literally, okay? From his lungs to his hips, he’s on fire. In that ‘searing hibachi can’t touch it’ way? In ahh–ahm–the whole…s**t…Like, without special gloves you’ll burn your hands to the bone, kinda hot? His ribs are made of metal…its a grate! His spine…. And he’s missing…like…most of his vital organs? Er..at least the ones that’d occupy that space…fiery hair…burning eyes set into coal pits…” He wished he had an accurate picture, wondered feverishly if Blarney maybe had someone who knew what Faustite looked like in a way where they could describe it without becoming a mess over the details?
“He doesn’t really have a….uhmn…his time is limited, yanno?” And once again he was motion, the thinking kind, the way the ink on his skin warped with his mood as he dug patterns in the dirt-dusted, unfinished concrete beneath their feet. “T’be in the flesh like the rest of us?” And gods…how the hell did he explain this properly? “He’s himself the same way you’re whoever you are outside of bein ‘Blarney’ n’me bein’ whoever I might be outside of bein ‘Albite’...except you can always be a ‘Page’ and I can always be a ‘Senshi’...or we can not…and together we have names, n’addresses, n’jobs..yeah? We get to choose this – or not this —”
“But not him. He doesn’t. He can’t…”
“The…power like what he has…like what you'll get….n’what I’ve gained? It has a cost.” Albite spoke with his hands, his arms, his expressive eyes. He felt a soft spike of sadness, for how he couldn’t explain in ways he knew he should’ve, all the risks that came with ‘magical girl’ territory. But Blarney hadn’t asked for any of that, not yet. And he wasn’t trying to bombard him! The poor guy! Just…just to educate…to warn…and…
“That is to say…what you’re looking for isn’t a person. Not quite. It’s an element encased in human trappings…its smoke if it spoke…and endless hunger to feed the literal fire in his absent guts…he doesn’t even bleed red like you n’I might…..” A longer pause, a longer sigh, as he kicked his dreads out of the way. His smile became self-indulgent, private, in the way one reviewed a memory.
“N’yeah…maybe I did look at the first guy I ever saw on fire and go ‘Damn, I want me some of that.’ In the most ‘not in a courthouse or under the eyes of any god’, kinda way? N’not even in the ‘gonna sleep with that’, way? Cause…uhmm…” He suddenly had the good nature to blush, the poor sense to look away from Blarney before he started birds and beesing the poor guy!
“But!! Y-you’ll meet stranger than him out there…if you’ve met any of the mirror-watchers n’ space aliens? The drapey ones, n’the pastel sorts. And the other kinda space aliens? The fish-scaled, yellow-skinned, pink-horned kinds that call themselves ‘Senshi’....in the loosest, but also truest way I’ve ever imagined…” Another ten thousand things he didn’t want to touch with an army of ******** like dinosaurs waking up and walking again, is what they are! Seriously….” He blew air, rolled his eyes to the heavens, wondered where ‘Grieve’ was, specifically, even? If only so he could’ve given the exact dot of maybe dead space in the sky both his middle fingers. “But space is wild and wide and endless…and Earth? ******** is so ********’ small, so tame n’even toned...”
“On the surface.”
“But not in reality. N’you’ll learn that too…yeah? So long as you keep on…” Which he could help him do, would, even, help him do. Why not, afterall? What was more closely aligned to the Negaverse than the most fallen of Earth angels? What was better to keep on hand than the one thorn in their side – whose temples dotted their rift – whose sanctuaries and coliseums rotted amongst its denizens. “Which…if you come back here in three days or so with more questions? I’ll uh…I’ll maybe help you do..”
“For the agreed upon price, yeahkay?”
***
Blarney listened in silence; no, there was no way that Faustite could be Eles, not if he couldn’t turn off the physical elements of the whole partially-youma thing.
(Unless, a nagging voice in the back of his head said, unless magic can change a person’s physical being, beyond hiding the heart-and-head holes, beyond just changing a person’s clothes…
But he pushed that thought away. There was no way, so there was no way.)
He also pushed away the images that popped into his mind unbidden - how did one have relations with a half-youma whose insides were mostly on fire? It sounded…painful, and Blarney didn’t really want to think about it much beyond that.
“I haven’t seen him,” Blarney finally said, voice soft, “but…I’ll keep looking. And…I’ll see if there’s anything I can learn about the other people you’re looking for.” He hesitated; he wanted to say more, he wanted to lay out more concrete rules for himself, for Albite, but…
Well, maybe some things were better left vague. More plausible deniability that way.
Blarney glanced back at the construction site, letting out a soft sigh as he pursed his lips. “Hey. Unrelated to–all the stuff we’re talking about. That–” he pointed at the building site, “--isn’t some like, evil death space lazer your guys are building to wipe out the city or something, right?”
***
He nodded, unsurprised, that Blarney hadn't seen Faustite, or Grieve, or Hybrasil either. They weren't disappointments he still couldn't shoulder, their weight indiscriminate compared to all the others. He told himself it was *enough* that Blarney was willing to try, to put his nice, clean ears to the Earth and listen real hard for the kind of chatter Waru would appreciate a week -- or month -- or lifetime from now.
Eternals had eternities to mine grudges, right? ******** it, if he remembered enough to mind it later? Then maybe he would...
His thoughts stalled as Blarneys question served as a wakeupcall of a reminder, the way it dragged Albites head up and his gaze over to the spot he'd all but forgotten by now! All glowy, and strange, and -- not really ominous? If he was thinking about it too much. "So...for starters? We're not the ones with the lasers *in* space....." He chuckled in a very 'you go on and think about that for a moment' manner. Before turning heel without elaborating any further.
He didn't want to kill the boys curiosity, to dampen that explorers spirit and detectives will! No, no, no -- he didn't need to expound all monolog-like about how 'I live here too -- on Earth -- the heck would I destroy it! ' not when he knew how he never would've explored anywhere important, or asked all the questions, or gone to space! If people had simply *handed* the answers over to him and their word for him to trust!
Better to leave some Mystery, let Blarney go on a hunt all his own...
"Go have a good night, Blarney! I'll call you again real soon..." He waved before stepping right and vanishing, leaving all his supplies and footprints behind.
