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 Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2021 4:12 am
Faustite was used to waiting — used to having to trust other agents when it came to human affairs. He paced while he waited, keeping himself from the uncomfortable burn of self-immolation, though the minutes passed with him craving something to do. No phone to play with, however, and the few auric sensations he caught were far enough in his periphery that to reach them took too much time.
All considered, the wait was short for not having ordered ahead.
He perked at the sound of taco time, all attention and restrained drool. It was good that she hadn't tossed his phone back to him; he wouldn't have caught it while so distracted. Disappointing that she had to tell him about it; she could've saved precious seconds by opening the box. Lack of efficiency was evidence that she was a new General, he guessed. Still, best not to s**t talk his peers for bringing him food that, as he checked the notifications on his phone, was apparently free. No Apple Pay note meant no ding to his bank account.
"I'm always hungry." He motioned for her to follow, then paused. "Have to eat around ten thousand calories a day to not die." Might've been more, but he stopped counting.
Faustite made a ricochet leap to the building above, displacing his inertia and reorienting himself in a corkscrew at the end. What it lacked in amenable places to sit, it made up for in breaking eye contact with street-level interlopers. Given the gentle night breeze and the air laced with rain's afterthought, eating up there was still far preferable than in Negaspace. Less chance to get bothered by lower ranks, too.
Then in afterthought, he admitted, "thanks for the food."
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Posted: Sat May 01, 2021 1:49 pm
Sylvite teleported up to the roof to join him. While doing sick parkour tricks was cool and all, so was having friendship tacos that hadn't fallen out of the bag while she was trying to show off. "You're welcome," she said, making her way to the edge of the roof and perching there. The bag was scootched away from the very edge, but her feet were dangling over the open air. "Can't work on an empty stomach, or something." Finally, she began to unload her haul. First there was the smaller bag, with the chips, then the three little plastic cups with the salsa, and then a full dozen tacos, each individually wrapped and labeled. She stacked them up between the two of them for easy access before keeping the last one for herself. "Does that mean you're a big foodie, if you've gotta eat that much?" she asked, unwrapping her taco and giving it a critical look over. It looked good. The meat was juicy and shredded, not ground. There was lots of cheese. It was crunchy, though, which was an American thing, which would probably give the pretentious foodie types a total heart attack. She gave Faustite a sideways glance to see if he was having a heart attack or not. "Or do you just like, drink a gallon of butter every day for breakfast?" She turned back to the taco and started picking out anything that looked like a vegetable.
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Posted: Sat May 01, 2021 6:18 pm
Faustite stayed silent as he dropped onto the ledge. One foot folded under him while the other dangled out into the nothing between their building and the next. What city smells he picked up on were obliterated by the tacos; he was glad for anything beyond the smell of dead dirt and desiccation.
Faustite was still looking out at distant glimers of activity when Sylvite asked a rhetorical question — or it was literal, could've gone either way. "Wouldn't say that."
Shifting, he glanced at her, at the food sitting between them. "I'm usually so hungry that I don't care how it tastes. Most things, unless they're raw, taste burnt by the time I'm done chewing. And anything I hate…" Faustite snapped his fingers and pointed at the grate covering his vital inferno. If he could learn to quit caring about flavor entirely, a gallon of butter would be better for pure calories. Or lard. Or congealed whale blubber. Not any whales washing up on beaches near DC, though.
"I still have to care about nutrition." Faustite took a taco for himself, unwrapped it as best his long nails could manage, and started on it. Shreds of wrapper remained, stuck fast by the cheese, but he didn't care. "Butter, it makes me too greasy. Won't come out of the grate, either." It was nearly a joke.
Whatever she picked out, he picked up, and draped on the next taco.
The question simmered a beat before he decided against his better judgment and asked it. "When you became a General, did you celebrate?"
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Posted: Sun May 02, 2021 7:25 am
Finally satisfied that her taco was completely veggie-free, Sylvite took a bite. She took a couple of seconds just to savor all that taco-y goodness before she said, "That sounds like a lot." She was a little quieter than normal, but didn't sound completely sympathetic. It wasn't because she didn't care. She could tell that it this was big thing and kind of a serious problem, and she didn't like the idea of someone being hungry all the time, but she was still in her bubbly, problem solving mode. "I can't get you stuff like this too much," she waved at the pile of food between them, "But I try to keep snacks around. Crackers, and candy and stuff. You can always have some of that, if you want." She fluttered her feet over the street below while taking another bite. "Some of the sour gummies or something might even be strong enough that you could taste them," she said. It was hard to know what to suggest other than that. Maybe there was food that was like, fireproof, but it wasn't something that she'd had to think about too much. "It's hard to know how to celebrate something like this. When I hit Captain, one of my friends took me out for frozen yogurt, but she's been, y'know. Gone." Sylvite glanced down for a second, but tried not to dwell on it. "Maybe this could be the celebration?" she held up what was left of her taco in a toast gesture, and she smiled.
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Posted: Tue May 04, 2021 9:11 am
"Hm. Gone isn't always bad." He hadn't seen Schörl yet; he hoped she was as gone as Sylvite's friend. Better for everyone that way, he supposed. Better for him.
Time for another taco. Again, poorly unwrapped, and again, he didn't care if he had to chew paper to eat it.
"It's celebration enough." Faustite raised the untouched end of his taco for the toast. There wasn't much to this impulsive midnight snack to call it a celebration, but he'd seldom met anyone that celebrated Negaverse accomplishments either. Might well be a lavish feast, this.
After another bite of taco, he considered the way it smoldered in his mouth. Raw meat might d well by the time he finished chewing, he figured. "Doesn't bother me if things taste burnt. It's just different." For a while, that's all that partial youmafication was — a difference. Then, over time, it became his normal. Then, when he became Elex or Eion, that felt different. Then strange. Then it left him uneasy to walk around like that, looking normal, feeling powerless, feeling confined by a skin that shouldn't have been his anymore.
Faustite ate the taco. Lettuce sizzled and popped when he left it on his tongue long enough.
"… Doesn't seem like something to celebrate, does it?" She seemed happy to be a General now, and enamored with her uniform, possibly her abilities. All that was at cost of new responsibilities, though. And it wasn't like they were getting paid.
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Posted: Sun May 09, 2021 6:36 am
"I mean, I think it's worth celebrating," said Sylvite, finishing off the rest of her taco almost as fast as Faustite ate his. It wasn't just because of the clothes, or even the powers, although she was super happy to be adorably zipping around rooftops like nobody's business. People argued all the time that stuff wasn't worth celebrating, that birthdays and holidays were just the passage of time or whatever, that parties were a waste of resources. Sylvite wanted to know what the point of resources was if it wasn't to make life a little bit more nice and fun every once in a while. "I gotta pick my battles when it comes to the Negaverse working environment, though. People look at me weird if I smile too much, or, like, give compliments." She glanced at the other General, who was very serious soldier and definitely fell into that category of people. "Imagine if I showed up with party hats." It was a fun thought, and she giggled, but it wasn't something she was gonna do. Instead, she picked out a second taco before Faustite could eat all of them. She unwrapped it and handed him the veggies directly this time. "Anyway." She tilted her head, looking into his firey eyes. "I got you food. Are you gonna tell me what stuff you like now?" Besides ashy tacos, apparently.
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Posted: Sun May 09, 2021 2:33 pm
"Do it," he answered without looking at her. For as much as he adhered to protocol, he was weary of its sameness. Sylvite in a party hat would've been audacious enough to get him to chuckle.
When was the last tie he genuinely laughed? He couldn't remember.
The thought departed quickly, and all the better for it; Sylvite's next question had him double-take incredulously at her, back ramrod straight, flame eyes moving saccadic between her pupils and the mouth that asked such a heinous question. "Did you ******** buy me food to ransom answers out of me? You tawdry, conniving b***h, I can't believe you ******** entrapped me like that."
He sighed, long and thick with smoke, at the ineffable stars. "You'll go far as a General." A weary compliment, that.
Shoulders dropped and he eased into lazily kicking the vast drop between their building and the next. He sat on his hands to avoid eating the rest of the tacos, though he accepted the proffered vegetables and poked them through the grate holes into his furnace.
"I… don't… know?" He admitted with an uplift of brows. "Stopped liking a lot of things. Used to like tea, think I still do. But I have to do a lot of rediscovering what I like." And that was ever a waste of time, or a luxury only belonging to humans, or something he hadn't earned, or postponed interminably for more important Negaverse duties. But to admit that to someone else, even a fellow General, was either providing a weakness or providing a burden. Camaraderie died with the untouched, unfettered parts of their souls.
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Posted: Sun May 09, 2021 4:14 pm
Okay, she might have picked up on the fact that he was annoyed easily, but she still hadn't been expecting that response. She just blinked at the insults, half wondering what tawdry even meant while the other half of her realized she had maybe messed up somehow. When he was done, she giggled for a couple seconds, even as her eyebrows edged closer together. "I mean, yeah, pretty much," she said, all casual, and then took another bite of taco. She watched him from the corner of her eye as she chewed, then added, "You're Information, too, right? Shoulda seen it coming, really." She stuck her tongue out at him, as careful as possible to make sure it looked friendly and teasing and not insulting. They might have been beyond that point, but she could try. She'd had no way to know that he was gonna take food bribes so personally. At least he answered the question. "Tea is good." It wasn't for her. She always got impatient and ended up burning her mouth, and even if she managed to time it right, somehow, half the time it had a bitter aftertaste. It worked for Faustite, though, with his whole classy aesthetic. "And tacos. And lots of other stuff that I'm sure you can find." She nudged one of the tacos in his direction and opened up the chip bag. "You can have more. It's okay. We don't even have to talk if it bothers you." She'd already learned plenty about him tonight.
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Posted: Tue May 11, 2021 4:39 pm
"Would've if I wasn't two years out of date." Faustite hadn't gotten to know Sylvite much before his impromptu trip to the Rift; he wondered if he would've seen this sass if he stuck around. Rare to encounter someone that shared their personality. It inspired an odd feeling, something like an itch beneath his teeth. Something he wanted to worry.
He accepted the taco (not that he needed provocation), and picked apart its wrapping while he considered her words. Maybe she tried to cheer him up by asserting that he liked things. He understood that he did, but he had avoided or been deprived of those things for long enough that he had forgotten them, and their absence haunted him. He used to enjoy being alive. He used to have goals beyond basic survival. But that had long gone awry.
He stared down at the lopsided bloom of paper, on which laid a perfectly wrapper-free taco for the first time that night. It reminded him of a creature he met during the last two years — a companion of some time, too — but he couldn't summon a name to mind. Its moniker was better suited to the language of his youma half.
Offer considered, he assented with a simple "good". Sylvite was pleasant — one of the most tolerant and tolerable Generals in the Negaverse now — but she was terribly human. And that, like the taste of ash, was not so much a deterrent as a departure from his norm.
Better to see how she fared with silence. Better to see if that silence is companionable. If not, well — any night that finished out with tacos was a good night.
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