Welcome to Gaia! ::

While boring, the first one had been the right one. It left him looking uninformed, but in truth, it left him feeling ashamed. When he had come back from a trip to his comet for a few days to learn that another building had burst up in flames and there were people dead, he could have made the assumption that it was just a failure of the construction, but he knew better than that. When was anything in this forsaken city not caused by Chaos?

He hadn't a clue Faustite was the one behind it, though, and perhaps that was to Faustite's advantage that evening.

Would he have reached the irredeemable tipping point then?

Encke quirked a brow at Faustite's dismissive response. In honesty, it did matter. If he had somehow chosen the path in front of him, that made him considerably less of a party forced into inhumanity than someone who didn't choose it, no matter how it happened. But he wasn't there to communicate philosophy with a Negaverse general.

Nor was he there to be his babysitter.

"And what's to make you believe I won't just leave you here once you fall asleep?"

Perhaps he found himself in an odd conundrum.

Nothing was stopping him except himself, and perhaps that was the trick. Faustite was banking on Encke being unable to make himself leave.

Home. The thought of the Negaverse being any kind of home was comical enough that Encke snorted derisively at the concept. And yet, if this half-monster in front of him was unable to bring himself back to any kind of full humanity, he supposed that was the closest he'd get.

The concept that he would pat himself on the back for it felt funny. Not exactly. It was just another day of being one of the few that was capable of defending this place.

"You could be. Or I could just wait a reasonable amount of time and then accept the logical conclusion you're definitely asleep and leave. Either one." Encke shrugged, leaning his back against the wall as if he was getting a bit more comfortable. He wasn't sure if he was. It felt right to make the allusion to it either way in any case.

He could just kill him in his sleep. End his threat.

But he apparently wanted to die, and that felt wrong, too.

"I should stop having morals, but that would be too difficult, unfortunately." He was fairly sure even Richard, who had been drained to utter exhaustion by Faustite, would still find a way to scold at him for taking a chance to opportunistically murder him.

He also had severe compunctions with killing. Call it a personal experience.

"I suppose you should make your own judgment on if I'd kill you or not."

Morals got too expensive.

He supposed in the Negaverse where it seemed the currency was other people's souls, he could believe that. Seemed like it'd be hard to have morals and also manage to make it all the way to general. He honestly couldn't imagine how dark the hearts were of those who made it all the way to general-sovereign. Were they immoral or simply amoral, only acting to the benefit of their world-consuming pseudo-queen?

The reality was, he had already made decisions he regretted, and they had driven him so deep into his own pit of depression and darkness that he had lost years to the trauma. The smile he offered Faustite was wry, but he wasn't about to bare his soul to someone who could probably do something about it.

Report to the Negaverse, for one, that Transcendent Eternal Encke was one of those Barren Pines Kids. Could make him identifiable. Extremely dangerous.

"If I have to break my morals, hope it's for a good reason." Encke glanced, however briefly, toward the exit of the alley. Faustite seemed too tired. He wasn't particularly worried about him leaving. "Perhaps one the others in my life could live with."

Faustite found himself fortunate that he was fairly sure man sleeping in an alleyway wasn't one of them.

"Easy to lose morality in a war like this." Encke's gaze turned back to the tired Faustite. "But I suppose I'm willing to keep paying the price."

He remained quiet until Faustite was asleep.

It was an opportunity. He was defenseless, almost entirely. There wasn't any way Faustite would notice in time if Encke simply found something sharp and drove it into where he presumed his heart was. Perhaps that wouldn't be effective. He was partially made out of fire, now. Perhaps it would have been better to simply put the fire out. Would he stop living if the fire entirely stopped burning?

Was it essentially his life force?

It left Encke paralyzed for a time long enough that he might have been embarrassed to admit it. The ability to end one of the threats of the Negaverse, right then, right there, was tantalizing. It was right in front of him. He knew Faustite would hardly have the same hesitance. If he caught Encke asleep, somehow, Encke would probably be dead before he could even take a breath to stop him. It was the kind of thing that made Encke ponder the merits of even still sleeping on this planet.

It would be so easy. Hilariously simple.

But Faustite, for some reason, trusted him. That in itself made turning around feel like a betrayal. But did a betrayal to someone so obviously problematic even matter? Would anyone even blame him for taking the opportunity?

He thought with a wry note that his sister probably wouldn't be hesitating. If Anser was there, she probably would have already found herself something to perform the deed with. Even if it was a particularly heavy box. Perhaps it was good she wasn't there. She didn't belong in the war, but Encke had no way to keep her out of it. She had been involved since she was a toddler, just like he had been involved before he was even an adult.

Faustite looked like a teenager. He probably had a similarly tragic story.

His thoughts were a jumble of indecision and he slid down the wall as one note became clear after thought cycle after thought cycle after anxious thought cycle: no, he couldn't kill Faustite. Not right now. Maybe if he was actively trying to murder someone. Maybe if he had been draining someone when Encke had found him. Not now. Not when he wasn't acting. Not when he arguably wasn't even a threat.

Would he be a threat again?

Likely. It seemed unlikely Chaos would just let one of their generals be that useless. Perhaps they would just infuse him with energy. Probably leave him with even less humanity than he thought he had. Maybe it'd be a mercy to kill him now.

But he couldn't.

It wouldn't have been a mercy to kill Ignacio Araya.

And so Faustite's gamble proved itself correct: Encke stayed to watch.

Eventually, Encke blearily realized that Faustite might have been stirring. He sighed. He walked away, for a moment.

When Faustite finally awoke, he'd find that there had been a scrawled note and a pastry left in front of him. There was still an eternal aura nearby, but he had concealed himself from view.



Probably to make sure he actually left.