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 Posted: Tue Jun 29, 2021 4:26 pm
His brain snagged on Faustites cute little nod of acknowledgement. The wave he'd given the kids, and the cutting juxtaposition of his mind placing cuteness and Faustite within a leagues distance of each other - but seeing the man wave at something - anything- especially living, breathing, s c r e a m i n g children, was kind of sweet, in the most dark humored of ways. Still that it was sweet was not lost on him. Even if his lunch nearly was
The parts of Albite that were stuck between 'aww boss' and 'oh god were scaring children', were briefly snuffed into not giving a single ********, because teleporting.
It was always a little disconcerting to get yanked around without context - a nice little magical slip through time and space. Maybe he should've handled it better, but he liked to be oriented with a destination in mind for his void trips.
Albite knew he had to do it more often to adjust, the rarity of it inbetween him collecting quotas every now and then was not nearly frequent enough to get him used to the feel of it. Even if it was Faustite smoothing the way and leading.
Which dropped them right back where they were, not the screaming wall of doom that made albite's flesh crawl, but also not where he'd expected them to be. Back in the deep gloam of the underdark. A home that would never be home because Albite wasn't a godamned mushroom - he liked fresh air and sunlight thank you very much.
"Ohgod..here? Can I ask why here, is that like..a thing I can ask?" When faustite had said they'd disappear the body, he'd figured the guy meant mafia style. Rolled up in a carpet and tossed off a cliff, not the depths of negaspace. Unless the agency had a freaking body freezer he didn't know about, specifically for storing oppsidasies away. "Also..like..you're good right?" and Albite readjusted his grip on the cop, figured it was gonna be a whole day of it. Hauling meat and making messes. At least he'd get a good workout of the whole thing.
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Posted: Tue Jun 29, 2021 7:43 pm
They'd reached Negaspace, though not precisely where he'd have liked; Faustite leaned against one of the great pillars supporting the room's crystalline vaulted ceiling, looking pale, and gave himself time enough for a few deep breaths. Even with the extra energy jolt, teleporting so many felt deeply taxing — like he'd spent another half a week in the Rift as a Captain. He hadn't wanted to walk more, hadn't wanted to do anything but sink down where he was and take a nap.
But a nap wasn't yet an option. This dumb Basic made a mess, and he had to clean it up before he could crawl atop a cool piece of sheetmetal and sleep to another day.
"Ask whatever you want," he replied, only half-listening. Stupid of other officers to bar questions from their recruits, regardless. "DC's got a robust police force. We dump him in DC, we risk him getting found. Rift isn't cop jurisdiction. Won't get found out here." He'd give details, but Albite hadn't seemed the type — blessedly didn't ask questions about Faustite's brief flirt with panic, or about how Faustite's anatomy worked, what with being on fire, or any of the other inanities that new officers produced in excess. No reason, then, to jump into how many weeks they'd have to wait for Destiny City's predators to reduce the corpse to bones, or what they'd do with a skeleton.
When he was certain he wouldn't fall over, he left the sturdy support of the pillar. "Good enough." His headache returned in force, and he sounded tired to himself, but Albite had only known him for the span of fifteen minutes. Boy wouldn't know.
With a brief beckon, Faustite started for the double doors barring access to the Hall of Shadows. "Going to the Rift. Stay close or they won't know you're with me." He never savored the company of those maundering shadow creatures, never liked how they beat on the glass with a hunger that aged into something a human couldn't comprehend. Never got answers to what they were, but he was certain they weren't human or youma. He had known, however, that no senshi would ever receive their respect.
"Or," he added in afterthought, "if you're too scared, leave him in the Hall." He was sure it wouldn't matter to those creatures, so long as Albite left the starseed with the corpse.
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Posted: Wed Jun 30, 2021 10:35 am
Faustite's explanation of the situation made all sorts of sense, while simultaneously making Albite feel especially simple for never having considered it before. Wasn't like the cops had a gateway portal into purgatory...of course neither did Albite without a chaperone, but whatever.
He followed and heaved the dead man that would tell no tales along, tripped into a pause at the damned doors that didn't need a 'do not enter' sign for Albite to know better than to toy with them - Then Faustite spoke, something about going into the Rift - and that - that caught Albites attention all anew. His eyebrows rose up to his hairline, eyes wide and face a picture of are you ********> with me - before the look dissolved into a sly slice of a smile. All 'hither I do come'; you absolute b*****d.
The nerve - ******** firebrand - the way Faustite had laid it all out like challenge, however unintentional, and Albite wouldn't refuse. Couldn't, because fear was a driving force, pain a pathway, and Faustite? All beckoning gestures and 'come hither you dumb piece of meat'. It was bait enough that Albite would have said yes even if the guy'd asked him to stick his hand in honey and ants. He couldn't imagine what the aftermath would be, only that his dim little mind warned it'd get messy. Maybe even deadly messy, but if he survived it?
The counter argument to all things that had ever stood as a barrier in Albites life. 'If I survive this', if he accomplished that. If he ignored what everyone else told him, what logic told him, and followed that low heat of 'other' that cried out; move, go, do.
He'd have a hell of a story to tell. The prospect of future pleasure and joy from an instant of danger, far outweighed the consequences of the 'now'. Canceled out entirely the drowning din of impending doom that stared back at him through a doorway that rivaled even the greatest's artists rendering of the gates into Hades. The ancient and shadowy creatures just beyond the glass far more imposing than any mythical Cerberus that had ever been left to guard said gates.
"Ohhh....I'll stay just as close as you'd like firebrand. I'll get all up in your grill even." Moth to a ******** flame, Albite followed, made himself stand straighter, put in effort to ignore the goosebumps and cold sweat that broke out over his skin. Like he'd let a little bit of deep, consuming, terror, stop him from going through with it; especially after Faustites goad of a request.
He'd just take deep breaths, force his leaden feet forewords, heavy on the way to the gallows. Heavier hoisting the cop turned corpse behind him.
So what if every step into that place made him want to slough off his own skin and flee...If the scrape and scream of the creatures beyond, wordless, unintelligible, called for his demise.
It was the noise that got to him the most. If hatred had a voice - it was this. Albite had always imagined it was how mothers sounded when they lost their children. Some deep rending thing that left nothing, but a vaccume of pain and loss in its wake. Then went beyond that; past rage, past reasoning. Whatever lived in the spaces beyond the door wanted Albites flesh, blood, and bones, and wouldn't be satisfied even after they'd had that. They wanted Albite rent to ash and sub-particles.
Torn down to atoms...
In the back of his mind Albite knew that even after the beings had all of that? Even then, they wouldn't have been satisfied...
And Albite wasn't cold, but he shivered. Twitch of nerves and flinch of flesh the whole way in, and he wondered if Fuastite felt it just the same...if it was different because he wasn't a Senshi?
All questions for later.
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Posted: Wed Jun 30, 2021 9:26 pm
Full of snide comments, this one. Mouthy, especially around his betters. The grill comment left him wincing. "If you want me to eat you." His voice was low, reserved a little respect for the violent ones beyond the veils.
The Hall of Shadows had a staircase leading into the bowels of the Citadel, where it passed from one plane of otherworld to the next, all the while lined with these venomous shapes of men. Each time he passed them, he wondered what they knew, what they heard but could never repeat with their broken mouths. It was human nature to get chatty to break tension, and many officers, even the higher ranks, traveled in pairs through this Hall. Whether to avoid getting lost to these shambling guardians, or stay safe in the Rift itself, Faustite never asked. He imagined, however, that their shambling horrors knew much more about the Negaverse than they could tell.
Even if Albite had a spicy repartee waiting for him, Faustite kept quiet through the duration of the hall. Their moans and hisses and thumps on the glass were something to contemplate, and when he caught sight of a hand reaching beyond that glass, reaching for the senshi in his wake, Faustite reached back for Albite's free arm and nearly jerked the man along behind him.
Double doors opened out into the tainted light of the Rift. Foreign ground, all rotten and cracked, the foundation ever giving away, ever shrinking down the plateau on which the base of the Citadel sat. It was most familiar ground for Faustite, where he'd often perched on the giant's steps of precipices that walked every agent down into the ruined city, past the proud skeleton of the colosseum, past desiccated, once grandiose archways reduced to blackened teeth. It was a long wander to the bottom where they'd reach that city, but they needn't go so far.
Under the white bullethole of the Rift's unblinking sun, Faustite had a better look at his companion. Handsome, if irreparably stupid. But more than the cut of his jaw or the way his clavicles fitted so smoothly into his on-display chest, Albite held himself much more confidently than he deserved. Faustite couldn't parse whether he was jealous or just irritated.
Regardless, the burnt offering General relaxed visibly when they breeched the space, and moved about it as if as entitled to be there as the glowborn eyes staring up at them from broken entryways and hollowed corpses of manmade structures.
He crouched at the edge of the narrow plateau, somewhat adjacent to their singular path down. "Over this side." Looking down, great swaths of crystalline plains stretched out toward darkened mountains, like a bramble nest that hid their lurking terrors. Before that, however, was a steadily widening crack in the ground where Faustite couldn't sight an end. There were many like it in the Rift; lucky that there was one so close to the Castle.
"Place always changes." He stood, dusted his hands of the Rift's foreign particulate. "Don't expect that to be there next time."
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Posted: Thu Jul 01, 2021 2:23 pm
Albite hissed a breath like a release valve, skin overwarm where Faustite had snagged him and pulled, likely saving his hide. He didn't want to think about the pissed off snarls and wretched moans that lay in their passing wake. Forced himself instead to stare forewords, like he had blinders on. It was better to look on ahead into the vast alien landscape before him, than continue to worry about what lay at his back. It already took an expanse of energy to fight down every single animal blind urge in his head that screamed run.
"At this point firebrand...I'm keeping my expectations limited." and Albite noted distantly that Faustite looked far better here in the din than he had up on the surface. Relaxed and controlled, like he was king of the place - or maybe all his movements were natural ease when in his element.
It took a moment, a slight heave and roll of the overweight burden of the body up to the edge, dropped unceremoniously like a sack of potato's, and then without any preamble, Albite placed his boot onto the cops side, and shunted him straight over the edge. Huffing minutely for the effort of the task, before crouching down to watch.
His dark gaze trailed the pathway of the body, just for a moment, and then widened to the far more intriguing whole of everything beyond the unblinking darkness of small ripped canyons.
"S'pretty - never been beyond the door before...Do you come here a lot?" tone subdued slightly, as if he was afraid he'd attract whatever lurked below the pathway. He couldn't help but think it all beautiful, a respectable type of deadly.
The little yellow dots of eyes, glowing jutted crystals, the place screamed danger in a way that tugged on his urge to explore it, however tentatively.
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Posted: Fri Jul 02, 2021 1:07 pm
Faustite nodded, though his assent didn't fully contextualize his relationship with the Rift. The ancient space witnessed many parts of him that no human would, and that no human would understand. People lacked the duality he lived; how could he explain that to Albite? Likely the recruit didn't even care; most took to throwaway questions like that because they couldn't live in their own silence.
"Usually alone," he clarified as his attention cast over the precipice. Up the steppe came a murder of youma — a few crustaceans with spiny black legs, one that looked like a glowing rhinoceros with horns down the length of its body, and a pygmy humanoid with an elongated face. Of them, the crabs were fastest, and outpaced all the rest in climbing the ruined, uneven steppe.
Faustite darted toward his companion, peeled away the distance between them until his blister-heat worried the skin on Albite's arm. "It's the youma's home, not ours. And you — everything here wants to kill you."
Which was to say — "We shouldn't stick around." Faustite jerked his head back toward the great doors to the Hall.
Better that they could get inside without wasting any energy distracting the things. The crabs closed in venomously quick, but they might yet obey his rank if he told them to piss off. The others were still liable to bend the knee, but he'd rather not chance it. Albite was a living snack to the lot of them, and hatred oft overruled discipline in these parts. Faustite walked at speed for the door.
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Posted: Fri Jul 02, 2021 2:25 pm
Albite repressed the urge to groan - caught between fire and frying pan - he almost wanted to request they stay and get snacked up by the youma, rather than breach back into the hall. Neither was safer for *him*- but at least the living breathing form of hatred and malice before him made sense. Far more sense than anything that lingered beyond the glass.
He could put context to what he could see, it helped that what he could see was so badass. A menagerie, a living world encased in death and ozone, ash and ancient pyres built rock and crystal.
Everything that lay beyond that, was a tantalizing place that didn't belong to him. In his purview, but out of his reach without someone else as a guide - without Faustite as a protective barrier. Like wanting to trudge into deep space, or the Mariana's trench...
Albite wanted for the simple reason because it was there, because it was interesting and alien and just right there. The want begat want, and if not for Faustites too hot to touch grasp, Albite might have stayed. Might have tried his luck against the fascinating crab creatures that skittered up the step. Would've created space and observed the vicious hollow eyed beasts - macabre mix of man and beast that followed them lightning quick.
Instead he vowed to invest in coolant gels and sunburn creams once he got home. To alleviate some of the sting from the saving grasp. "I'd noticed...if I get to pick a death? I'd rather it be out here than in there..." Albite swallowed heavily around the words. Grit his teeth and hugged as close to Faustite as he dared while they made their way back through. Bore out the heat, because it was better than being grabbed up.
He knew - deep in his guts - that death by youma would have been a far more useful way to go. Maybe even a faster way to go, than whatever the wanting hands that screeched and clawed out through the glass could have offered.
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Posted: Fri Jul 02, 2021 3:59 pm
Ducked into the Hall, Faustite took point and felt Albite's presence close at his six. The glooming creatures beyond the glass scraped and stared, their husks agitated, their eyes each lighting on Albite during their passage. As they broke line of sight, Faustite knew they would step back, grow inert, watch empty for the next youma or witless Lieutenant to roam into their domain. Theirs was a neverending station, an unfulfilled doom that weighed heavy on what was left of them.
Even as the creatures swiped at the stubborn glass, Faustite spoke. "No one dies in here." He looked to one of the faces, jaw long since slack in a gaped but silent scream, and continued on their winding tour. Terse at best, he said no more until they reached Negaspace from that liminal hallway.
"Least you'd die with the youma," Faustite continued as he brought the double doors to a quiet close behind them. His clawed hands lingered together, just over the seam. "Taken out of the rebirth cycle. Kinder than dying anywhere else." He hadn't asked it before — never knew what Albite thought of the infinite cycle of a senshi starseed, or if it discomfited him to know that his power was a hereditary one, from a dead planet just beyond Metallia's grasp. There was an Albite before Albite, who answered to another name, a star's name, and had a civilization at its beck. When Albite died in this life, there would be a next, and a next, and a next, until that starseed was irrevocably compromised.
That, he supposed, was the greatest comfort he could draw from his burning body. There would be no more Faustites. No more Eions. And if there was truly a knighthood to his name, his starseed would not take part in it.
"Think that's enough excitement for a day. Got a good take. Your part — here," he half-turned, one hand still on the door, and the fingers on his free hand rippled upward to grasp a cluster of brimming, violet orbs from nowhere. His hand remained outstretched as he waited for Albite to claim his earnings.
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Posted: Fri Jul 02, 2021 10:42 pm
In that moment, considering any sort of cycle felt like something beyond his own capabilities. Hearing Faustite say it out loud only made him think of life cycles in fifth grade science, raising butterflies from caterpillars.
Of Buddhism and existentialism as practices - how none of it applied to him directly, because he’d never want to live or die in anything, but the now. He yearned to be hedonism incarnate, and have at the sort of carnal pleasures that would have made Dionysus envious. Albite considered himself a physical being rather than a mental one. Even if his mind had some input - it was minimal - and he never gave it very heavy lifting to do. It was through his body that he ultimately experienced all things.
To choose between unending life or perma-death. All of it was far above his limited scope of comprehension, especially since neither would have truly been him - not as he existed right that very second. Either would have been nothingness to him - just a cessation of being - like falling asleep.
“Well, I’m not a big fan is sleeping, at all, let alone eternally? But if I’ve gotta go…youma’d make a good story at least.” Nonchalance imbedded in his tone. He’d feed them, it’d serve a purpose. He rarely thought of dying, but knew he didn’t want to be lowered into six feet of earth in some lead lined sarcophagus. Better to become ashes for a tree, or fish food, or put himself out in an ice flow.
Albite shook the lingering thoughts free, like a dog loosing water from its fur - tucked his dreads up and back in a huff as his gaze slid from the doors over to Faustites generous offering. “Yeah - but like, no? You shouldnt’a had to do any extra work, let alone haul tons o’ fun around. So consider us fair n’ square on the energy stuff.” Lacing his fingers together behind his neck, a faint smile quirked the corner of his lips as he gently refused Faustites offer “Besides, I had a good time, s’all I really needed outta this.”
If Faustite got his energy - if it made up for the utter mess he’d made. That was good enough for him. He didn’t need a pay out from the General, not for this. Not when for the first time in a long time, he’d actually enjoyed going out on assignment with someone far above his rank and station.
“We could do it again even? Next time, more draining, but with a lower body count, or whatever floats your boat.” Albite still wanted to feed the guy - 10k calories sounded astronomical, and damned intriguing…
Something to chew on while he hoped for a ‘next time’
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Posted: Sat Jul 03, 2021 2:58 pm
Faustite considered the senshi's words, shrugged, and disappeared the orbs back to that untold space.
Wasn't sure what to make of this one, who only needed 'a good time'. Most people's definitions of good times, so far as he gathered anymore, included sex, movies, eating out, sports, tourist attractions. Today they disrupted a museum and killed two non-Negaverse-affiliated officers. Albite seemed disappointed in himself over the bodies, so Faustite assumed he hadn't found himself a depraved serial killer. But the rest? Maybe Albite got off on a little mayhem. Or, like a bored dog, he needed to be worked.
It wasn't his burden to figure out. "Let you know if I need you again." Most recruits hadn't appreciated his method of contact, but since the Negaverse had yet to make fireproof communicators for him, message-laden youma were his only option.
He was running out of rats, though. Half of them got dusted, and were apprehensive to follow his orders.
Finally he came away from the wall, gave Albite a vague, two-fingered salute as he passed. "Get you to the surface. You're dismissed." Just another report to file, now, and this one seemed to squirrelly to write it for him. At least it went better than his time with the last recruit, though he still hadn't figured out what to make of this one.
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